Black Dogs By Ian McEwan

"Black Dogs" by Ian McEwan is not a straightforward simple tale, where Event A is followed by Consequence B culminating in Climax C.

We know early on in the book what the "big event" is and the "big event" is not really what the book is about...it's about lots of things. McEwan is not one to tell a story only on one level.

The plot of "Black Dogs" involves distinct parts moving backwards and forwards in time as the tale unfolds. It starts with a preface describing the early life of the narrator, Jeremy. Orphaned at a young age and left in the "care" of his older sister and her dysfunctional family, he became drawn to the parents of a succession of friends throughout his youth. Observing their interactions from a neutral perspective, he was able to see the reasons why conflict arose between parents and their children and frequently became closer to the parents of his friends than their own children were.

The story proper starts in 1987, where Jeremy is now a publisher of academic textbooks and is happily married to Jenny and has several children. Although he is now a parent himself, he is still very much drawn to Jenny's parents, June and Bernard Tremaine and it is June and Bernard's personalities and experiences that form and shape much of this novel.

Jeremy is writing the memoirs of the Tremaine family and to this end, goes to visit June in a nursing home where she is dying of leukaemia, with the intention of getting her version of a kind of "family myth" regarding a sinister and genuinely life-changing experience that she and Bernard had during their honeymoon in France in the 1940's. Jeremy knows that his wife Jenny has lived with the effect that this experience had on her parents and the consequences arising from it, all her life and which led to her irritation and partial alienation from June and Bernard.

As Jeremy tries to get to the root of what actually happened all those years ago, he finds out that nothing should ever just be taken at face value...

"Black Dogs" is not for lovers of fast-paced thrills, but if you're looking for a book that takes it's time and builds layer upon layer of detail to the plot and makes you really think beyond just the words printed on the page, you'll find this book a pleasure.

"Black Dogs" by Ian McEwan on Amazon - available in hardback, paperback, audio and Kindle format