Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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At some moments chilling, at others desperately sad…

Atonement by Ian McEwan

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This is a novel that lost the Booker Prize (in a competitive race along with David Mitchell) to The True History of the Kelly Gang. This is also a novel I was avoiding for a long time because it seemed quite likely to simply be more or less like the movie (and in plenty of ways it is), but ended up being a lot more compelling, more serious, and more thoughtful than the film ever hoped to be. If you don’t this book or film, Briony […]

Horrible. But he was acquiring the knack of steering his new form.

The Cockroach by Ian McEwan

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This book is bad and Ian McEwan should feel bad for writing it. I think about a review for his newest book that was reviewed here and it’s funny to me how angry the review was. I am not angry because I knew going in it would be bad and embarrassing, but they had it at the library and I knew I’d be too curious to pass it up. Mostly I think political writing and especially political novels are already a really bad idea. I […]

You can hate the heroine; don’t hate the novel

Atonement by Ian McEwan

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CBR11bingo: History/Schmistory (historical fiction) BINGO: Two Heads Are Better Than One, Back to School, Own Voices, Classics, History/Schmistory While having lunch with a friend recently, we started talking about books and he mentioned that he doesn’t have any use for novels that are “about writing.” On reflection, I realized I am often quite taken with novels that could be classified as metafiction (The Magpie Murders, The Word is Murder/The Sentence is Death, and, going all the way back to CBR V, The Tragedy of Arthur). So […]

She loved him, though not at this particular moment.

The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan

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This is Ian McEwan’s second novel, published in 1981. In it, a youngish married couple who have clearly been together long enough to drift apart a little find themselves in Venice on a kind of extended holiday. They spend their days mostly in silence, drifting through the city together or apart, smoke weed on the balcony, drink at sunset, and barely talk or touch. But then they meet Robert, an eager and willing tour guide to the city’s hidden features. He takes them to dinners, […]

eeeugh. gross in so many ways.

The Innocent by Ian McEwan

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TRIGGER WARNING: sexual violence- and other terrible things What started out as a fairly mild story of a man who is a:not good at his job and b: not a terribly interesting person lurched suddenly downhill into a dirge of rape fantasy, sexual violence, murder, and dismemberment. “Eeeugh” was putting it lightly. I’m not one to tell you, dear reader, what to do- but I strongly suggest avoiding this garbage fire. I am normally drawn to post-war drama- especially involving espionage and intrigue- but I […]

Murder from the perspective of a fetus

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I am a huge fan of Ian McEwan, and I’ve read a number of books by him. So when I saw that he had another one out, I went and picked it up. I’m not sure what to say about Nutshell (2016). It held my attention, but I couldn’t buy into the entire conceit, so I was left with the feeling that it was odd. The protagonist of this story is a fetus in its mother’s womb (I assumed it was a boy because it sounded like […]



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