Join us on a literary world trip!
Add this book to bookshelf
Grey
Write a new comment Default profile 50px
Grey
Subscribe to read the full book or read the first pages for free!
All characters reduced
The Comfort of Strangers - cover

The Comfort of Strangers

Ian McEwan

Publisher: RosettaBooks

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

Summary

A twisted relationship between two couples reaches a terrible climax in this novel by the New York Times-bestselling author of Machines Like Me.   Colin and Mary are lovers on holiday in Italy, their relationship becoming increasingly problematic as they become increasingly alienated from one and other. They move from place to place in this foreign land but seemingly without aim or purpose, seemingly bored and without attachment. Then they meet a man named Robert and his disabled wife, Caroline.   Colin and Mary seem happy for the diversion—happy to meet another couple that takes their focus off of each other for a while. But things become strange when they attempt to leave: Robert and Caroline insist that they stay with them for a while longer. While Mary and Colin do rediscover an erotic attraction to each other during this time, they also find that their relationship with Robert and Caroline is taking a dreadful and horrific turn, in this “fine novel” by the Booker Prize-winning author of Saturday and On Chesil Beach (New Statesman).   “McEwan perfectly captures the thrill of travel when one is divorced from familiar surroundings and the chance of something unusual and out-of-character seems possible. Of course, this being a McEwan fiction, the possibility is a brutal truth about how people find love in extreme ways.”—The Daily Beast
Available since: 02/08/2011.
Print length: 115 pages.

Other books that might interest you

  • The Girl Who Cried Diamonds & Other Stories - cover

    The Girl Who Cried Diamonds &...

    Rebecca Hirsch Garcia

    • 0
    • 7
    • 0
    “Bridging tenderness and violence, and brimming with danger and magic, The Girl Who Cried Diamonds will leave you breathless.” — Anuja Varghese, author of Chrysalis
    		 
    “In these 14 hard-edged and unapologetic stories, debut author Garcia tackles topics ranging from human trafficking and drug abuse to eating disorders and middle-age angst, and in no-frills prose, carves out bizarre and palpable realities, breathing strange life into a horde of depressed, deprived, and abused characters.” — Publishers Weekly
    		 
    The boundaries between realist and fabulist, literary and speculative, are shattered in this remarkable debut collection for readers of Carmen Maria Machado, André Alexis, and Angélique Lalonde 
    A girl born in a small, unnamed pueblo is blessed—or cursed—with the ability to produce valuable gems from her bodily fluids. A tired wife and mother escapes the confines of her oppressive life and body by shapeshifting into a cloud. A girl reckons with the death of her father and her changing familial dynamics while slowly, mysteriously losing her physical senses.
    		 
    Infused with keen insight and presented in startling prose, the stories in this dark, magnetic collection by newcomer Rebecca Hirsch Garcia invite the reader into an uncanny world out of step with reality while exploring the personal and interpersonal in a way that is undeniably, distinctly human.
    Show book
  • Cursed Bunny - cover

    Cursed Bunny

    Bora Chung

    • 1
    • 4
    • 0
    Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, Cursed Bunny is a genre-defying collection of short stories by Korean author Bora Chung. Blurring the lines between magical realism, horror, and science-fiction, Chung uses elements of the fantastic and surreal to address the very real horrors and cruelties of patriarchy and capitalism in modern society. Anton Hur's translation skilfully captures the way Chung's prose effortlessly glides from being terrifying to wryly humorous.
    Show book