SOURCE: Burrows, Stuart. “Lost Promise.” New Statesman 127, no. 4402 (11 September 1998): 47-8.

In the following review, Burrows provides an unfavorable assessment of Amsterdam, deriding McEwan's tendency toward melodrama and forced symbolism in his novels.

Ian McEwan lays claim to a world of terrifying violence and desire uncharted by the polite talking shop of the postwar British novel. “Angus Wilson, Iris Murdoch, Kingsley Amis … they all seemed to come from a world and a social milieu that I had nothing to do with,” he has said. “I guess the stories I was writing were a lunge at another territory.”

McEwan's new work, Amsterdam, unfortunately signals yet another retreat from this new aesthetic territory, offering in its place the world of gossip columnists, newspaper editors and cabinet ministers tediously familiar to readers of contemporary British fiction. Bestseller lists notwithstanding, his most interesting work now seems far behind him.

For at least a...