I suggest wearing a helmet.

While I was certainly entertained and enthralled whilst reading this offering from McEwan, i also felt i was being bludgeoned about the head with his humanist morality tale. Cudgelled and beaten. This is what will happen to you if you do this (whack). And this (whack) is what will happen if you do that (whack). And don't you forget it. Now off you go and enjoy yourself.

How very British.

As a humanist, McEwan (a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association) may be inclined to believe that people are not corrupted by freedom. As a rationalist, he is forced to realise that people are nonetheless prone to make poor moral choices. His two main characters illustrate this; they are both free to choose the path of moral stupidity.

There is no overt moralising in "Amsterdam" - McEwan is too fine a writer. Its didacticism is present in more subtle ways and is inherent in the narrative structure. In its vigorously improbable plot with its ludicrous retributions visited upon its imperfect characters, in its undertow which drags you into McEwan's causal moral universe. Simple cause-and effect ethics. The book toys with the contentious issue of euthanasia, but ultimately does not probe deeply enough into this complex issue. It fails to stimulate much cerebral work on the part of the reader, and fails to surprise. (To the blind, all things are sudden - McLuhan). Ultimately, its treatment of the euthanasia theme seems conflicted at best.

I would suggest Peter Singer's "Rethinking Life & Death" for thought-provocation. While it lacks the thrills and spills of McEwan's inventive parable, it is slightly more coherent, logical and thought-provoking in its delivery. Of course, "Rethinking Life & Death" is not a novel. But then, the novel is dead. Isn't it? Voluntarily euthanised.

"Two former lovers of Molly Lane stood waiting outside the crematorium chapel with their backs to the February chill."

The opening line shows McEwan knows how to concoct an intriguing aperitif, and introduces us to teh central characters, Vernon and Clive. One is a newspaper editor, the other a classical composer. As a character, Vernon, the editor, is a lame effort. As opposed to Clive, whose character and temperament are well developed within the novel, Vernon, the editor, is almost a void: "The thought recurred to Vernon Halliday, during an uncharacteristic lull in his morning, that he might not exist."

This is a tad problematic. Of course Vernon doesn't exist. He is a fictional character. "Lately he had realised he was learning to live with non-existence." What is this, Kafka? In reading "Amsterdam" as, essentially, a tragedy, how are we to appreciate the inevitability of Vernon's fate, as destined by the make-up of his character, if he doesn't have one? How are we to respond to the trials and travails of a character who barely exists? Who is scarcely more than a name, and who, furthermore, doubts his own existence? My "suspension of disbelief" collapsed under its own weight. The character o"Vernon" is little more than a cartoon sketch. So who cares what happens to him as a result of his moral choices? It's pointless trying to enter into a meaningful exchange with the character of Vernon, who is not fully, humanly developed. His fate ultimately gets thrown into the reader's "whatever" basket.

For McEwan's morality tale to work, the reader should first actually give a sh*t about his characters. The work is entertaining, but not anywhere near thought-provoking enough for a morality tale. The moral paths that Vernon and Clive embark upon are quite clearly wrong, and lead to their undoing so rapidly that the tale detaches itself from reality. For it is general indifference, rather than swift justice, which constitutes the fabric of daily life. "Amsterdam" is problematic, also, in its innate claim that it is legitimate to obtain a signature from a person whilst they are unknowingly doped with drugs. And its foolish insistence that such a document is perfectly legal. Yes, this is part of the plot.

Disappointing. "Amsterdam" carries the mantle of a Booker Prize winner, which raises reader expectation to a level few books can hope to assuage.

Perhaps the very notion of giving a piece of literature a prize, as if it were a breeding bull, is more a simple sales tactic than a meaningful accolade. Awards such as the Booker, the Pulitzer and the Miles Franklin serve to boost publishers' sales, and maintain the public's interest in what is a dying, if not actually clinically dead, artform: the novel. Like the Archibald Prize in Australian painting, it all media spectacle. The work itself is less important than the controversy, the stardom and the myth which surrounds it - but then, hasn't myth-making always been the only true artform?

"Nowadays if you're a crook you're still considered up-there. You can write books, go on TV, give interviews - you're a big celebrity and nobody even looks down on you because you're a crook. You're still really up-there. This is because more than anything people just want stars."
Andy Warhol, "From A to B and Back Again" (1975).


Recommended: No