Spoilers

And for my next trick: another Booker winner. Sometimes when you're on a roll (or in this case, a hot streak of one), you just crave something similar. Which isn't always easy within the confines of the categories and isn't necessarily the point (there was a point?!), but to hell with it, that's what I did.

Indeed, 'to hell with him' might not be a bad subtitle for Amsterdam, Ian McEwan's *checks cover* 1998 winner. It certainly covers the gist of it between the three or four main characters as their relationship changes through dramatic events with unforeseen consequences, as they are all tied together by a woman who played a crucial part in all of their lives and has just passed away.

In my experience, McEwan seems to be a divisive author – plenty of people I know love him and plenty dislike him strongly. My sole experience till this point was On Chesil Beach, which I thought was pretentious and I didn't find much to enjoy in it. However, I'm all about second chances (and third – I can be pretty easy to get onboard and hard to kick off) and put all previous thoughts and prejudice to bed.

And I'm glad I did, because it was excellent. It was superbly written, consistently gripping, the characters were interesting and well-realised, the plotting carefully done, full of twists and bascially pretty much everything one could hope for. It's not a long book, but I did actually read it in the mythical single sitting. Which is largely a ringing endorsement for it.

Except for the end. Which I thought was ridiculous and thoroughly unbelievable. Sure, the characters were rather self-absorbed, self-obsessed and at times showed themselves to be not particularly nice individuals. And which is a good case in point for strong characters not having to be likeable or relatable to in order to interesting. But bearing in mind their relationship, even if it did unravel somewhat through the course of the book as events spiralled out of their control, the ending just seemed totally far-fetched to me. While sometimes closure is nice and human nature inevitably wants to know what happens, in this case I think some ambiguity (did it happen or not?) would have been far stronger. As I've said before, probably somewhere else in this blog, an ending can really make or break a book, especially as that's the last thing that you take away from it. It's testament to the strength of this one that it didn't break it for me, it was otherwise extremely good, but it is disappointing to have it spolit in such a way.

Book number: 66
Title: Amsterdam
Author: Ian McEwan
Category: Charlotte's choice