SOURCE: Bien, Peter. Review of Enduring Love, by Ian McEwan. World Literature Today 72, no. 4 (autumn 1998): 830-31.

In the following review of Enduring Love, Bien commends McEwan's literary skill, but finds the novel weakened by its dependence on plot for its impetus.

One does not appreciate how cynical Ian McEwan's novel Enduring Love is before reaching “Appendix I,” purportedly a scientific paper on de Clerambault's syndrome (a homoerotic obsession with religious overtones), where one reads, “A review of the literature … suggests that this is indeed a most lasting form of love, often terminated only by the death of the patient.” Only then does the “enduring love” of the title leap out as, alas, that of the madman Jed Parry, whose protestations of attachment to the hapless Joe Rose never waver, whereas all the “normal” people in the novel suffer ups and downs, suspicions, and anguish in their relationships. A...