IAN McEWAN — THE CONCRETE GARDEN / BLACK DOGS

Author photo

If I’m standing on my kitchen balcony I can speak with folks in the neighboring building without raising my voice too much. My across-the-way neighbor N and I got to talking about books. This was her favorite. I proposed we finally meet on the sidewalk and exchange books. I gave her The Encyclopedia of the Dead by Danilo Kis; she had asked for my favorite book, and this is not my favorite book, although it’s very good, I just didn’t know which book was my favorite on that particular day and I was in a bit of a rush scanning my shelves, I didn’t want to leave N waiting on the sidewalk. The Concrete Garden is N’s favorite book. It’s Ian McEwan’s first novel and it has a lot of the qualities that draw me to first novels as a sub-genre: it’s brief, violent and takes risks. It made me want to read some more of Ian McEwan, so I also read Black Dogs, which seemed more like the wandering extension of an excellent vignette/standalone short story (about black dogs) found about three-quarters of the way through it. 

Read October 2021