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Book Club Author Suggestion: Ian McEwan

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Brief Bio:

Ian McEwan (b. June 21, 1948) is a British novelist, short story writer, playwright, and screenwriter perhaps best known for the novel Atonement. His writing (of which there are 18 novels, five screenplays, two children’s books, and two plays, as of writing) explores recurring themes such as time, politics, history, society, childhood, reality, personal emotions such as guilt, and human relationships. Born in Aldershot, Hampshire in South East England, the family moved often due to his father’s army service to countries like Libya and Singapore, before resettling in England when Ian was 12. He went on to study English literature, gaining both a BA and MA and embarking on a career as a writer of dark stories (earning him the nickname “Ian Macabre”), before expanding his focus into forms of literary fiction and gaining mainstream recognition with works such as Enduring Love and Amsterdam. His novels have been adapted numerous times. In addition to his fictional works, McEwan has also written essays or given interviews on global issues. The author is critically acclaimed as one of the UK’s most important writers from the latter half of the 20th century.

Available Works in the Colorado Book Club Resource

The Book Club Resource has 8+ copies of the titles below available for 8+ weeks at a time to reading groups across the state. The descriptions below are from ThriftBooks.

Atonement (2002)| Discussion Questions

Atonement by Ian McEwan book cover

On a hot summer day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses a moment’s flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant and Cecilia’s childhood friend. But Briony’s incomplete grasp of adult motives–together with her precocious literary gifts–brings about a crime that will change all their lives. As it follows that crime’s repercussions through the chaos and carnage of World War II and into the close of the twentieth century, Atonement engages the reader on every conceivable level, with an ease and authority that mark it as a genuine masterpiece. 

Sweet Tooth (2012) | Discussion Questions

Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan book cover

The year is 1972. The Cold War is far from over. England’s legendary intelligence agency is determined to manipulate the cultural conversation by funding writers whose politics align with those of the government. The operation is code named “Sweet Tooth.” Serena, a compulsive reader of novels, is the perfect candidate to infiltrate the literary circle of a promising young writer named Tom Haley. At first, she loves the stories. Then she begins to love the man. How long can she conceal her undercover life? To answer that question, Serena must abandon the first rule of espionage: trust no one.

The Children Act (2015) | Discussion Questions

The Children Act by Ian McEwan book cover

Fiona Maye is a leading High Court judge who presides over cases in the family division. She is renowned for her fierce intelligence, exactitude, and sensitivity. But her professional success belies private sorrow and domestic strife. There is the lingering regret of her childlessness, and now her marriage of thirty years is in crisis. At the same time, she is called on to try an urgent case: Adam, a beautiful seventeen-year-old boy, is refusing for religious reasons the medical treatment that could save his life, and his devout parents echo his wishes. Time is running out. Should the secular court overrule sincerely expressed faith? In the course of reaching a decision, Fiona visits Adam in the hospital–an encounter that stirs long-buried feelings in her and powerful new emotions in the boy. Her judgment has momentous consequences for them both.

Quotations:

  • “A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended.” ― Atonement
  • “Love doesn’t grow at a steady rate, but advances in surges, bolts, wild leaps, and this was one of those.” ― Sweet Tooth
  • “Blind luck, to arrive in the world with your properly formed parts in the right place, to be born to parents who were loving, not cruel, or to escape, by geographical or social accident, war or poverty. And therefore to find it so much easier to be virtuous.” ― The Children Act
  • “It wasn’t only wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding; above all, it was the failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you.” ― Atonement
  • “Was everyone else really as alive as she was?… If the answer was yes, then the world, the social world, was unbearably complicated, with two billion voices, and everyone’s thoughts striving in equal importance and everyone’s claim on life as intense, and everyone thinking they were unique, when no one was. One could drown in irrelevance.” ― Atonement
  • “I turned the pages so fast. And I suppose I was, in my mindless way, looking for a something, version of myself, a heroine I could slip inside as one might a pair of favourite shoes.” ― Sweet Tooth
  • “I was the basest of readers. All I wanted was my own world, and myself in it, given back to me in artful shapes and accessible form.” ― Sweet Tooth
  • “Blind luck, to arrive in the world with your properly formed parts in the right place, to be born to parents who were loving, not cruel, or to escape, by geographical or social accident, war or poverty. And therefore to find it so much easier to be virtuous.” ― The Children Act
  • “A story was a form of telepathy. By means of inking symbols onto a page, she was able to send thoughts and feelings from her mind to her reader’s. It was a magical process, so commonplace that no one stopped to wonder at it.” ― Atonement
  • “This is how the entire course of a life can be changed – by doing nothing.“ ― On Chesil Beach
  • “All she had needed was the certainty of his love, and his reassurance that there was no hurry when a lifetime lay ahead of them.” ― On Chesil Beach
  • “How can one understand the inner life of a character, real or fictional, without knowing the state of her finances?“ ― Sweet Tooth
  • “Nations are never virtuous, though they might sometimes think they are.“ ― Solar
  • “He saw that no one owned anything really. It’s all rented, or borrowed. Our possessions will outlast us, we’ll desert them in the end.“ ― Atonement
  • “When anything can happen, everything matters.“ ― Saturday

Awards & Recognition:

The author is the recipient of numerous honors and awards. Some highlights:

  • Booker Prize for Amsterdam (1998), plus several other other shortlists.
  • 1987 Whitbread Prize for The Child in Time
  • Somerset Maugham Award for First Love, Last Rites
  • 1999 Shakespeare Prize
  • 2011 Jerusalem Prize
  • 2020 Goethe Medal

Videos/Interviews

Sources

Book club sets are circulated to participating libraries via the CLiC courier. Read all about the program on the Book Club Resource landing page. If you are interested in receiving book club sets but are not already a member library, use the online form to get signed up.

Since the BCR has always relied on book donations, we are deeply grateful to all of the institutions and individuals that have donated sets and helped make the collection stronger. Please contact bookclub@coloradovirtuallibrary.org for questions or to discuss donations.

Michael Peever
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