Books by author: Ian McEwan

With all the critical acclaim this novel received, I expected to like it a lot more. The first half is filled with a lot of dull and unnecessary fleshing-out of secondary characters, who all seem to be to be out of my Jane Austen nightmare. Once the point of view shifts to Robbie at the midpoint, things get substantially better, and the final section makes the whole effort almost worthwhile.

The ending contains a minor twist—which I guessed about a hundred pages before it was revealed—and a major twist that surprised me a little. If not for the final bit of surprise, I would have regretted reading this book.

(By the way, I do recognize that a lot of what I hated about the first half of the book is what makes the minor twist work, but that doesn't make it any more palatable.)