I am flabbergasted. The first two thirds or so of this was superb - funny, fascinating; the characters weren't particularly easy to engage with, but the circumstances of their lives and the content of thier discussions more than made up for this. Enter the final section, upsettingly described on the cover as 'sparkling', in which all semblance of plot is pissed out the window in favour of religious psychobabble and I lost all will to root for the remaining twats of characters demanding my attention. It really was a chore, and I remain shocked that the book transformed so drastically. Hmph.

I am not feeling articulate enough for this, but never mind.

Could have been amazing - Trocchi clearly talented; sad that need for smack overran this. However, tragedy runs nicely alongside book and its content. Several amazing passages. Skeptical at first that a man could convincingly portray first-person womanhood, particularly in erotic context, but was very wrong. Which was nice.

I really, really enjoyed this. Very clearly written, hilarious, devastating, woven so seamlessly into fairytale ... very sexy, very tragic.

Exciting in every possible way.

Divine.

I'd forgotten how fucking amazing this book is. Read it. Read it, now.

What's all the fuss about? This is the only time I've known McEwan to be anything resembling mundane. I'm used to his trajectories being rather more than meandering-trundling-meandering-trundling-meandering-URGH-trundling.

My one regret is that I watched the film before I read the book. This was amazing. Towards the end the tension was so great that I was spasming on the sofa.

Actually, my other regret is that I read Saturday before I read this, because the whole 'intruder in your house attacking your loved one(s)' thing felt a little tired, simply because it happened in both, and Saturday is so much more deserving of that feeling. In fact, Saturday seems to be Enduring Love's shadow the more I think about it - Ian McEwan walked the line beautifully between likeable and so-smugly-middle-class-they-should-have-seen-it-coming when he wrote Joe and Clarissa, whereas the Perowne family were consistently irritating. But that's not really revelant: the point is, Enduring Love is mindbending, mindowning, wonderful.

I was interested in finding out more about Assia; the telling of her I found to be hopelessly indulgent.

Main issues:
- far too sycophantic, especially when dealing with Kant
- far too many grammar errors. The number of commas I had to add, remove, and replace was obscene.

On the other hand, this book sent me on my merry way to discovering more fully Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Frege, and Heidegger, which I am very happy about. Worth the read for that alone.