Amsterdam [Formato Kindle]

There they meet George Lane, Molly's husband and another former lover Julian Garmony, the Foreign Secretary, who's despised by Molly's former lovers.

The novel traces the lives of the four men after Molly's funeral when they all face pinnacle moments in both their private and professional lives.

Amsterdam is a book without heroes. The characters fail to grab your sympathy, but this adds to the reader's curiosity as you try to unravel their true worth and nature. It's not a book about how the strong and ruthless survive but rather how obsession with work can turn into self-obsession and ultimately destruction as the books characters take personal desire over public responsibility.

The book's 196 pages make it more of a novella than a novel and some would argue that more time should have been given over to plot and character development. However an expansion of the books length could have faltered the quick tempo, that McEwan's rich language lends to the book, and the vagueness of the characters leads us to question rather than condemn them at the end, allowing for the books effect to linger long after the final page has been read.

This books quality has been questioned in comparison to other Booker winners but Amsterdam, a book so rich in dramatic irony should be judged on its own merits. This socio-political satire manages to examine such a thorny issue as human morality in a humorous and entertaining fashion and is a recommended read.

Who knows why it won the Booker Prize? Surely The Comfort of Strangers or The Innocent deserved it more. Other reviewers have suggested variously that the committee felt guilty about ignoring McEwan's previous work, or because the book featured an interplay between theme and character brilliant enough to justify the award. I interpret that to mean that the judges thought it clever that the novel's characters were shallow, and that the newspaper Vernon Halliday edited was shallow, and that the symphony Clive Linley wrote was derivative and fatally unvaried, and that ultimately the book itself was shallow, too, and so decided Amsterdam was a brilliantly self-referential piece of---I don't know, meta-fiction or something.

Maybe so, but some of the social commentary in the book reads like a magazine article rather than a novel, like a 2,000-word piece in a weekend supplement, and I expect more from McEwan: strong characters and images and themes that resonate in your head like a fascinating bad dream.

Amsterdam is light entertainment, a finely written but forgettable tale by a brilliant author who's capable of producing much, much better work.

Amsterdam concerns two friends who meet at the funeral of their former lover Molly Lane. One is a composer, trying to write the Millenium Symphony, whilst the other is a newspaper editor. Both enjoy great success and live the 'high life'. Upon seeing the undignified way in which their lover perished - after a long, debilitating, degenerative disease - they make a pact ensuring that each would end the other's life should it ever begin to slip away like Molly's did. A dignified death in a time where such deaths are few and far between.

Amsterdam is essentially a 'morality play' - at times funny, sad, and disturbing. It raises some complex issues, particularly the question of what it is that constitutes a life worth living. Unfortunately, however, it misses the mark, ending up shallow and lacking.

Kudos to Ian McEwan. He has finally won the coveted Booker. But how Amsterdam won when Black Dogs, The Comfort of Strangers and, most recently, Enduring Love (which wasn't even nominated) all failed is beyond me. I can't help but agree with the London Literati, who soon after the victory, labelled this one the Consolation Booker.