Movies from Ian McEwan

The Cement Garden

After the death of her husband, the mother of Julie, Jack, Sue and Tom begins to suffer from a mysterious illness. Aware that she is going to have to go into hospital she opens a bank account for the children, so that they can be financially self-sufficient and will be able to avoid being taken into care by the authorities. Unfortunately she also dies and Julie and Jack (the older, teenage children) decide to hide her body in the basement so that they can have free reign of their household. Soon Tom has taken to dressing as a girl whilst Sue has become increasingly reticent, confiding only to her diary, meanwhile Jack and Julie sense an attraction developing for each other. However Julie's new beau, Derek, threatens to unearth the many dark secrets within this family as he becomes increasingly suspicious of Jack.
Ian McEwan
Writer
“Maybe I’m so fond of it because it is so faithful,” he once told an interviewer, adding that “practically every sentence” ends up on the screen.
Movies from Ian McEwan

Housekeeping

In the Pacific Northwest during the 1950s, two young sisters whose mother has abandoned them wind up living with their Aunt Sylvie, whose views of the world and its conventions don't quite live up to most people's expectations.
Ian McEwan
Writer
Long ago I saw the movie "Housekeeping." I forgot the director's name now. I thought that was a beautiful film.
Movies from Ian McEwan

Brokeback Mountain

Two modern-day cowboys meet on a shepherding job in the summer of '63, the two share a raw and powerful summer together that turns into a lifelong relationship conflict
Ian McEwan
Writer
the Annie Proulx story Brokeback Mountain I thought and that's only 7,000 words and it's all there. Although, I thought that was a very good adaptation.
Movies from Ian McEwan

The Dead

After a convivial holiday dinner party, things begin to unravel when a husband and wife address some prickly issues concerning their marriage.
Ian McEwan
Writer
I think it was the last movie John Huston made he caught absolutely everything in that story.
Books from Ian McEwan

Herzog

Saul Bellow's Herzog is part confessional, part exorcism, and a wholly unique achievement in postmodern fiction. Is Moses Herzog losing his mind? His formidable wife Madeleine has left him for his best friend, and Herzog is left alone with his whirling thoughts - yet he still sees himself as a survivor, raging against private disasters and the myriad catastrophes of the modern age. In a crumbling house which he shares with rats, his head buzzing with ideas, he writes frantic, unsent letters to friends and enemies, colleagues and famous people, the living and the dead, revealing the spectacular workings of his labyrinthine mind and the innermost secrets of his troubled heart.This Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Malcolm Bradbury'Spectacular ... surely Bellow's greatest novel'Malcolm Bradbury'A masterpiece ... Herzog's voice, for all its wildness and strangeness and foolishness, is the voice of a civilization, our civilization'The New York Times Book Review
Ian McEwan
Writer
...has the best opening line: Herzog by Saul Bellow. “If I am out of my mind, it’s all right with me, thought Moses Herzog.”
Books from Ian McEwan

What Katy Did

What Katy Did is an 1872 children's book which follows the adventures of a twelve-year-old American girl, Katy Carr, and her family who live in the fictional lakeside Ohio town of Burnet in the 1860s. Katy is a tall untidy tomboy, forever getting into scrapes but wishing to be beautiful and beloved. When a terrible accident makes her an invalid, her illness and four-year recovery gradually teach her to be as good and kind as she has always wanted. Two sequels follow Katy as she grows up: What Katy Did at School and What Katy Did Next. While the next two books after this trilogy, Clover and In the High Valley, narrate the story of Clover, Katy's younger sister. Susan Coolidge, pen name of Sarah Chauncey Woolsey (1835–1905), was an American children's author who is best known for her Katy Carr Series. The fictional Carr family of this series was modeled after Woolsey's own family and the protagonist Katy Carr was inspired by Woolsey herself; while the brothers and sisters "Little Carrs" were modeled on her four younger siblings.
Ian McEwan
Writer
...has the best title: What Katy Did by Susan Coolidge. The elegant, summarizing title of a much-loved children's book.
Books from Ian McEwan

The Darkroom of Damocles

A classic pitch-black wartime thriller from the author of An Untouched House.
Ian McEwan
Writer
...I last bought: The Darkroom of Damocles by Willem Frederik Hermans. He is one of the great, under-celebrated masters of European fiction. First published in 1958, this novel was much praised by John le Carré and considered by some to be one of the best novels to come out of the Second World War.
Books from Ian McEwan

Under the Net

Iris Murdoch's debut—a comic novel about work and love, wealth and fameJake Donaghue, garrulous artist, meets Hugo Bellfounder, silent philosopher.Jake, hack writer and sponger, now penniless flat-hunter, seeks out an old girlfriend, Anna Quentin, and her glamorous actress sister, Sadie. He resumes acquaintance with the formidable Hugo, whose ‘philosophy’ he once presumptuously dared to interpret. These meetings involve Jake and his eccentric servant-companion, Finn, in a series of adventures that include the kidnapping of a film-star dog and a political riot on a film set of ancient Rome. Jake, fascinated, longs to learn Hugo’s secret. Perhaps Hugo’s secret is Hugo himself? Admonished, enlightened, Jake hopes at last to become a real writer.
Ian McEwan
Writer
…I first bought: Under the Net by Iris Murdoch. Philosophy, sex, kidnapping, fireworks. I read it, fascinated, at the age of 14 and barely understood it. But it made me impatient for my adult life to begin.
Books from Ian McEwan

We Had To Remove This Post

Does what you see change who you are?‘A superbly poised, psychologically astute and subtle novel of mental unravelling’ - Ian McEwan, author of AtonementKayleigh is broke. Out of options, she takes a job as a content moderator, reviewing horrors and hate online and deciding which posts needs to be removed. Kayleigh is good at her job, and in her colleagues she finds a group of friends, even a new girlfriend. For the first time in her life, the future seems bright . . . But soon the job begins to shift Kayleigh’s world in alarming ways. In the glare of the screen, how long can Kayleigh hold on to her humanity?Hanna Bervoets' stunning novel We Had To Remove This Post is translated from the Dutch by Emma Rault.‘This novel gives us an acid glimpse into a new form of labor existing today . . . Fascinating and disturbing’ - Ling Ma, author of Severance
Ian McEwan
Writer
…I’d like turned into a Netflix show: We Had to Remove This Post by Hanna Bervoets. A crazy milieu. A group of young people work shifts for a tech company, taking down disgusting or false posts. Daily confrontations with the worst in human nature drives them to drink and through shifting relationships.
Books from Ian McEwan

On the Origin of Species

It is now generally recognized that the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859 not only decisively altered the basic concepts of biological theory but had a profound and lasting influence on social, philosophic, and religious thought. This work is rightly regarded as one of the most important books ever printed.The first edition had a freshness and uncompromising directness that were considerably weakened in subsequent editions. Nearly all reprints were based on the greatly modified sixth edition (1872), and the only modern reprint changes pagination, making references to the original very difficult. Clearly, there has been a need for a facsimile reprint. Professor Mayr's introduction has a threefold purpose: to list passages in the first edition that Darwin altered in later editions; to point out instances in which Darwin was clearly pioneering; and to call attention to neglected passages that show Darwin as a much deeper thinker than has been recognized. No one can fail to be impressed by the originality of Darwin's treatment and by the intellectual challenge his work presents even to the modern reader.
Ian McEwan
Writer
…I’d gift to a new graduate: On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. Natural selection formed the variety of all living things—“there is grandeur in this view of life.”
Books from Ian McEwan

God Is Not Great

In god is Not Great Hitchens turned his formidable eloquence and rhetorical energy to the most controversial issue in the world: God and religion. The result is a devastating critique of religious faith god Is Not Great is the ultimate case against religion. In a series of acute readings of the major religious texts, Christopher Hitchens demonstrates the ways in which religion is man-made, dangerously sexually repressive and distorts the very origins of the cosmos. Above all, Hitchens argues that the concept of an omniscient God has profoundly damaged humanity, and proposes that the world might be a great deal better off without 'him'.
Ian McEwan
Writer
…I’d pass on to my kid: God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens. I am the proud dedicatee of this eloquent statement of rational humanism.
Books from Ian McEwan

We Don't Know Ourselves

The #1 Irish Times bestseller WINNER of the An Post Irish Book Awards 'A clear-eyed, myth-dispelling masterpiece' Marian Keyes 'Sweeping, authoritative and profoundly intelligent' Colm Tóibín, Guardian 'With the pace and twists of an enthralling novel' Irish Times 'Evocative, moving, funny and furious' Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times 'An enthralling, panoramic book' Patrick Radden Keefe 'A book that will remain important for a very long time' An Post Irish Book AwardWe Don't Know Ourselves is a very personal vision of recent Irish history from the year of O'Toole's birth, 1958, down to the present. Ireland has changed almost out of recognition during those decades, and Fintan O'Toole's life coincides with that arc of transformation. The book is a brilliant interweaving of memories (though this is emphatically not a memoir) and engrossing social and historical narrative. This was the era of Eamon de Valera, Jack Lynch, Charles Haughey and John Charles McQuaid, of sectarian civil war in the North and the Pope's triumphant visit in 1979, but also of those who began to speak out against the ruling consensus - feminists, advocates for the rights of children, gay men and women coming out of the shadows. We Don't Know Ourselves is an essential book for anyone who wishes to understand modern Ireland.
Ian McEwan
Writer
…currently sits on my nightstand: We Don’t Know Ourselves by Fintan O’Toole. A brilliant merging of the personal and the political in this history of Ireland’s struggle to become a modern, secular state.
Books from Ian McEwan

Youth

Set sail for Africa and the Far East with this iconic tale of adventure from the author of Heart of Darkness. In this semi-autobiographical coming-of-age tale, Charles Marlow, Joseph Conrad’s alter ego, shares the story of his first journey to the East. At the age of twenty, he becomes second mate aboard the ship the Judea. But disaster awaits the vessel after it leaves England, loaded with hundreds of tons of coal on its way to Thailand. A fierce storm at sea, followed by a fire and explosion, tests Marlow and the Judea’s crew, and the account of their hardships on the long journey to Bangkok is a riveting tale of survival from Conrad, a veteran of the British merchant marine and the author of such classics as The Secret Sharer.
Ian McEwan
Writer
...I read in one sitting, it was that good: Youth by Joseph Conrad. Conrad’s autobiographical tale of his first command, which turns out to be in a rowboat, fleeing a sinking ship with its cargo of burning coal.
Books from Ian McEwan

The Radetzky March

'a 20th Century masterpiece'-- The Telegraph'"For sheer, epic sweep, I love reading The Radetzky March... I can't recommend it highly enough" Jeremy PaxmanSet during the doomed splendour of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, The Radetzky March tells the story of the celebrated Trotta family, tracing their rise and fall over three generations. Theirs is a sweeping history of heroism and duty, desire and compromise, tragedy and heartbreak, a story that lasts until the darkening eve of WWI, when all is set to fall apart. A rich and luminous masterpiece, moving, compassionate, witty and dramatic, The Radetzky March is one of the great reading pleasures of 20th-century literature.
Ian McEwan
Writer
...made me rethink a long-held belief: The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth. I thought that revolutions apart, political orders shifted slowly. Then I read of the intricacy and solidity of the Austro-Hungarian empire crumbling under the force of history. Americans beware!