The Child In Time By Ian McEwan
"The Child In Time" is Ian McEwan's third novel, first published in 1987.
The Child In Time deals with the tragic theme of child abduction.
Stephen Lewis, a children's book author, takes his 3-year-old daughter Kate on a routine Saturday morning shopping trip to the supermarket. At the checkout, Stephen's attention is distracted and Kate disappears...
Ian McEwan takes us on a journey of lives devastated by the disappearance of a child.
The Child In Time won the 1987 Whitbread Prize for Best Novel.
"The Child In Time" - Table of Contents
Ian McEwan - The Child In Time
- "The Child In Time" By Ian McEwan - Summary
- Reviews Of "The Child In Time" By Ian McEwan
- Online Study Resources For "The Child In Time" By Ian McEwan
- "The Child In Time" On Amazon USA
- "The Child In Time" On Amazon UK
- More About The Author Of "The Child In Time" - Ian McEwan
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"The Child In Time" By Ian McEwan - Summary
"The Child In Time" By Ian McEwan on Wikipedia
The Child in Time (1987) is a novel by Ian McEwan. It won the Whitbread Novel Award for that year. It concerns Stephen, an author of children's books, and his wife two years after the kidnapping of their three-year-old daughter Kate.Plot Summary Of The Child In Time
The book is set in a dystopian near future at the end of the twentieth Century, in a continuation of the Thatcher government (the book was written in 1987).
Stephen Lewis is, by his own admission, an accidental author of children's books. One Saturday, on a routine visit to the supermarket, in a concentration lapse, he loses his only daughter, Kate. The only purpose in his life is that he is a member of a committee on childcare. Otherwise he spends his days lying on the sofa drinking scotch and watching mindless TV programmes. His wife, Julie, has become a recluse, and he visits her very rarely. He has a close friend, Charles Darke, who published his first novel and who is now a junior Minister in the Cabinet, and the Prime Minister's favourite. His wife, Thelma, is a quantum physicist. She engages Stephen with her outlandish theories on time and space. However, his friends lives are about to change irrevocably in a way he cannot understand, and he is a helpless bystander.
Eventually Stephen experiences a strange event that he cannot explain: he sees his parents as a young couple in a pub, before they marry. The book also deals with his grief and eventually his painful acceptance of losing his child.
Themes Used In The Child In Time
The book deals with the theory that time is relative, and that time can be fluid and unstructured. In one respect it could be viewed as a time travelling story. At the very core of the novel is the "child in time" - Stephen himself - appearing to his mother as a child's face at a window, which makes her decide to keep the child - him - rather than to abort. It also explores the way both Stephen's and Julie's lives disintegrate after Kate's disappearance, and how an unexpected event at the very end of the book may bring them back together.
The novel shows connection between the lead character Stephen and Ian McEwan himself, as the author was fighting for the custody of his children after divorcing his wife at around this time.
Read the article on Wikipedia at The Child In Time
Reviews Of "The Child In Time" By Ian McEwan
- The Antigonish Review: Michael Byrne - Ian McEwan The Child in Time
- Michael Byrne Ian McEwan The Child in Time
- The Child in Time
- The Book Barn review of The Child In Time
Online Study Resources For "The Child In Time" By Ian McEwan
Teaching and study resources for "The Child In Time" By Ian McEwan
- Ian McEwan Website: The Child in Time
- Website devoted to the British author Ian McEwan
- The Literary Encyclopedia
- The Child In Time
- Vandalizing time: Ian McEwan's 'The Child in Time.' | CRITIQUE: Studies in Contemporary Fiction | Find Articles at BNET.com
- Vandalizing time: Ian McEwans The Child in Time. from CRITIQUE: Studies in Contemporary Fiction in Arts provided by Find Articles.
- Teachit's English teaching resources
- The Child In Time
"The Child In Time" On Amazon USA
"The Child In Time" by Ian McEwan
The Child in Time
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"The Child in Time opens with a harrowing event. Stephen Lewis, a successful author of children's books, takes his 3-year-old daughter on a routine Saturday morning trip to the supermarket. While waiting in line, his attention is distracted and his daughter is kidnapped. Just like that. From there, Lewis spirals into bereavement that has effects on his relationship with his wife, his psyche and time itself: "It was a wonder there could be so much movement, so much purpose, all the time. He himself had none." This beautifully haunting book won a 1987 Whitbread Prize. "
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"The Child In Time" On Amazon UK
"The Child In Time" by Ian McEwan
"In simple terms A Child in Time is a novel about child abduction, and a parents response to that. At a deeper level the story is hinged upon the two key themes of childhood and time, and is laced with satirical observations of modern society. "In every child there is a hidden adult and in every adult there is a hidden child" is a pivotal observation placed early on in the novel and one which repeatedly returned to. There is Kate, the child that disappears one day in a supermarket and held forever more as a child in her parents minds as they are robbed of her future, Charles, the adult who regresses to childhood in a breakdown, the surreal experience that Stephen, the father, has of floating back in time watching his parents discuss whether or not to have him aborted. Time, McEwan is saying, is not a constant. Time is malleable.
The plot itself is by no means the defining reason for reading this book. Character development is not done by McEwan for its own sake and therefore you never feel particularly sympathetic towards any of his characters. In every character detail (and one thing that Ian McEwan is renowned for is his almost exhaustive attention to detail) there an agenda. Every action or experience of any character is related to a theme. Children. Time. Children. Time. Every sentence is cleverly carved for achieve maximum literary effect. Even the structure of the text has a purpose as the observant reader will notice clever shifts between conditional, perfect, and imperfect tenses to demonstrate passage or insurmountability of time."
More About The Author Of "The Child In Time" - Ian McEwan
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Ian McEwan - British Novelist, Short-Story Writer, And Screenwriter
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Ian McEwan has been writing fiction since the 1970's and has written many bestsellers and received numerous literary awards and glowing critical acclaim. It is difficult to sum up Ian McEwan's writing...a few words and phrases spring to mind...
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Collections of short stories by Ian McEwan...
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Have you read "The Child In Time" By Ian McEwan? Would you like to? Share your thoughts here!
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- ChineseKitesforKids ChineseKitesforKids May 4, 2009 @ 10:07 pm
- I love this book (almost) as much as you. 5 stars!
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- qlcoach qlcoach Jul 5, 2008 @ 8:14 pm
- Okay, I think authors need to network a little more. Feel free to interact at my lense:
http://www.squidoo.com/groups/publishingclub
Sincerely: Gary Eby, newly published author and therapist
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