No Comfort

Ian McEwanWhen we started The Comfort of Strangers, I had a little history with Ian McEwan. I read Atonement (as did most teenage girls, I think) in high school, and I had only a small inkling of his apparent tendency towards perversity (If you’ve read Atonement, no explanation is necessary) in his writing. In that novel, Robbie’s unintentional switch of his letters to Cecilia, one innocent, one not-so, also leads to his death, but in a way that is less shocking, and I think less horrifying than Mary and Colin’s in The Comfort of Strangers. It wasn’t until I sat down to write this that I realized the intensity of Atonement and the starring role played by misunderstanding and perversity in that novel.

My previous statement was true, I did only have a small inkling of the author’s tendency towards perversity, but I’m not sure that I can explain why I didn’t better grasp the theme of the novel. The Comfort of Strangers was perhaps more shocking because Colin’s death is more violent, and intimate. Robbie and Cecilia died because of World War II, Colin has no such grand end: his death was not caused by septicemia as the result of a gun-shot wound, and he did not drown when the Germans bombed Balham station in London. I cried when I read Atonement, but I felt no such compassion for Colin or Mary. I think I threw the book across the room when I finished it. I was disgusted by them, and even more so by Robert and Caroline.

Mary and Colin’s relationship compared to Robbie and Cecilia’s is much less moving, and the latter pair, though they make no claim to perfection, is more pitiable and attractive because of what they suffered and the strength of their love. Colin and Mary are rather annoying, and Robert and Caroline are in no way an attractive pair, yet Colin and Mary find themselves inexplicably drawn to them. After this novel, I don’t feel inclined to give Ian McEwan another chance, although I have yet to decide whether Atonement redeems him.