Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Ian McEwan's Novels Exercise
Ian McEwan's Novels Exercise
Here are a selection of blurbs from Ian McEwans books. Can you match an appropriate
title with each book? Which one would you like to read the most?
BLACK DOGS ENDURING LOVE NUTSHELL ON CHESIL BEACH SATURDAY
1. _____________________
Trudy has betrayed her husband, John. She's still in the marital home – a dilapidated,
priceless London townhouse – but not with John. Instead, she's with his brother, the
profoundly banal Claude, and the two of them have a plan. But there is a witness to their
plot: the inquisitive, nine-month-old resident of Trudy's womb.
2. _____________________
Henry Perowne, a successful neurosurgeon, stands at his bedroom window before dawn and
watches a plane – ablaze with fire like a meteor – arcing across the London sky. Over the
course of the following day, unease gathers about Perowne, as he moves amongst hundreds of
thousands of anti-war protestors in the post-9/11 streets.
A minor car accident brings him into confrontation with Baxter, a fidgety, aggressive man,
who to Perowne’s professional eye appears to be profoundly unwell. But it is not until Baxter
makes a sudden appearance at the Perowne family home that Henry’s earlier fears seem about
to be realised...
3. _____________________
In 1946, June and Bernard set off on their honeymoon. Fired by their ideals and passion
for one another, they had planned an idyllic holiday, but in France they witness an event
that alters the course of their lives entirely. Forty years on, their son-in-law is trying to
uncover the cause of their estrangement and is led back to this moment on honeymoon
and an experience of such darkness it was to wrench the couple apart.
4. _____________________
One windy spring day in the Chilterns Joe Rose's calm, organised life is shattered by a
ballooning accident. The afternoon could have ended in mere tragedy, but for his brief
meeting with Jed Parry. Unknown to Joe, something passes between them – something
that gives birth in Parry to an obsession so powerful that it will test to the limits Joe's
beloved scientific rationalism, threaten the love of his wife Clarissa and drive him to the
brink of murder and madness.
5. _____________________
It is July 1962. Edward and Florence, young innocents married that morning, arrive at a
hotel on the Dorset coast. At dinner in their rooms they struggle to suppress their
private fears of the wedding night to come and, unbeknownst to them both, the events of
the evening will haunt them for the rest of their lives.