Family And Relationships In Ian Mcewans Fiction

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Family and Relationships in Ian McEwan's Fiction

Author : Tomasz Dobrogoszcz
Publisher : Lexington Books
ISBN 13 : 1498539882
Total Pages : 265 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (985 download)

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Book Synopsis Family and Relationships in Ian McEwan's Fiction by : Tomasz Dobrogoszcz

Download or read book Family and Relationships in Ian McEwan's Fiction written by Tomasz Dobrogoszcz and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2018-02-23 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book provides a lucid analysis of all Ian McEwan fiction published to date, from his 1975 debut short stories up to the 2016 novel Nutshell, spanning forty years of his literary career. Apart from a general discussion of McEwan’s works, the study offers a uniform focal point: it concentrates on one of the key issues taken up by the writer – the aspect of relationships between partners and between family members. As the book demonstrates, the novelist employs interpersonal relations to establish a pertinent context in which he can dramatically portray the process of identity formation in his characters. Throughout his fiction, McEwan consistently uses references to psychoanalysis, either veiled or direct. The proposed book investigates the novelist’s oeuvre through the lens of the psychoanalytic theory developed by Jacques Lacan. The approach used makes the book useful both for readers well familiar with this apparatus, and for those who need introduction to Lacanian psychoanalysis and such of his concepts as “desire,” “fantasy,” “the symbolic order” or “ the Name-of-the-Father.”

Machines Like Me

Author : Ian McEwan
Publisher : Anchor
ISBN 13 : 0385545126
Total Pages : 291 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (855 download)

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Book Synopsis Machines Like Me by : Ian McEwan

Download or read book Machines Like Me written by Ian McEwan and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2019-04-23 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Booker Prize winner and bestselling author of Atonement—”a sharply intelligent novel of ideas” (The New York Times) that asks whether a machine can understand the human heart, or whether we are the ones who lack understanding. Set in an uncanny alternative 1982 London—where Britain has lost the Falklands War, Margaret Thatcher battles Tony Benn for power, and Alan Turing achieves a breakthrough in artificial intelligence—Machines Like Me powerfully portrays two lovers who will be tested beyond their understanding. Charlie, drifting through life and dodging full-time employment, is in love with Miranda, a bright student who lives with a terrible secret. When Charlie comes into money, he buys Adam, one of the first generation of synthetic humans. With Miranda's assistance, he codesigns Adam's personality. The near-perfect human that emerges is beautiful, strong, and smart—and a love triangle soon forms. Ian McEwan's subversive, gripping novel poses fundamental questions: What makes us human—our outward deeds or our inner lives? Could a machine understand the human heart? This provocative and thrilling tale warns against the power to invent things beyond our control. Don’t miss Ian McEwan’s new novel, Lessons, coming in September!

The Child in Time

Author : Ian McEwan
Publisher : RosettaBooks
ISBN 13 : 0795304099
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (953 download)

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Book Synopsis The Child in Time by : Ian McEwan

Download or read book The Child in Time written by Ian McEwan and published by RosettaBooks. This book was released on 2011-02-08 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A child’s abduction sends a father reeling in this Whitbread Award-winning novel that explores time and loss with “narrative daring and imaginative genius” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). Stephen Lewis, a successful author of children’s books, is on a routine trip to the supermarket with his three-year-old daughter. In a brief moment of distraction, she suddenly vanishes—and is irretrievably lost. From that moment, Lewis spirals into bereavement that effects his marriage, his psyche, and his relationship with time itself: “It was a wonder that there could be so much movement, so much purpose, all the time. He himself had none at all.” In The Child in Time, acclaimed author Ian McEwan “sets a story of domestic horror against a disorienting exploration in time” producing “a work of remarkable intellectual and political sophistication” that has been adapted into a PBS Masterpiece movie starring Benedict Cumberbatch (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). “A beautifully rendered, very disturbing novel.” —Publishers Weekly

First Love, Last Rites

Author : Ian McEwan
Publisher : Rosetta Books
ISBN 13 : 0795301898
Total Pages : 166 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (953 download)

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Book Synopsis First Love, Last Rites by : Ian McEwan

Download or read book First Love, Last Rites written by Ian McEwan and published by Rosetta Books. This book was released on 2011-02-11 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Somerset Maugham Award winner: Dark early fiction by the author of Nutshell—“A splendid magician of fear” (The Village Voice Literary Supplement). Taut, brooding, and densely atmospheric, the stories here show us how murder can arise out of boredom, perversity from adolescent curiosity—and how sheer evil can become the solution to unbearable loneliness. These short fiction pieces from the early career of the New York Times–bestselling and Man Booker Prize–winning author of Atonement and On Chesil Beach are claustrophobic tales of childhood, twisted psychology, and disjointed family life as terrifying as anything by Stephen King—and finely crafted with a lyricism and an intensity that compels us to confront our secret kinship with what repels us. “A powerful talent that is both weird and wonderful.” —The Boston Sunday Globe “Ian McEwan’s fictional world combin[es] the bleak, dreamlike quality of de Chirico’s city-scapes with the strange eroticism of canvases by Balthus. Menace lies crouched between the lines of his neat, angular prose, and weird, grisly things occur in his books with nearly casual aplomb.” —The New York Times

Ian McEwan

Author : Irena Księżopolska
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1040021891
Total Pages : 285 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (4 download)

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Book Synopsis Ian McEwan by : Irena Księżopolska

Download or read book Ian McEwan written by Irena Księżopolska and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-04-30 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a discussion of seven “canonical” novels by Ian McEwan (The Cement Garden, The Comfort of Strangers, The Child in Time, The Innocent, Black Dogs, Atonement, On Chesil Beach), introducing radical new readings, which are offered not as ultimate and conclusive “solutions” of the textual puzzles, but as possibilities to engage with the text creatively, to enrich the critical consensus and restore interpretative freedom to the readers. This project formulates a strategy of “inclusive reading” – an approach to the text that does not seek to reduce it to a single interpretation, and yet is comprehensively informed through the analysis of the primary text, critical discussion, authorial comments and the context of the composition. Each reading demonstrates the metafictional structure of the texts, indicating that McEwan’s works may be treated as invitations to roam within their worlds, examining the multiple frames of their structure and the meanings generated thereby. All the chapters attend to submerged, repressed, or deliberately masked voices. The Cement Garden is seen as a multi-layered dream, with a shifting hierarchy of dreamers; The Comfort of Strangers is viewed as an inverted metafiction, with insubstantial characters corrupting more complex heroes; The Child in Time is read as Stephen’s book written for his dead daughter; The Innocent as a memory narrative of Leonard who refuses to notice Maria’s role as a spy. In Black Dogs the over-exposure of unreliability is studied as a screen for personal trauma; in the analysis of Atonement Briony’s claim to authorship is questioned and Cecilia is suggested as an alternative narrative agent. Finally, examining On Chesil Beach, both characters’ voices are reconstructed in search of the superior narrative power, which in the end is seen to be elusive, as the text seeks to undermine the hierarchy of voices.

On Chesil Beach

Author : Ian McEwan
Publisher : Vintage Canada
ISBN 13 : 0307371212
Total Pages : 178 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (73 download)

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Book Synopsis On Chesil Beach by : Ian McEwan

Download or read book On Chesil Beach written by Ian McEwan and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2009-02-24 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE The #1 bestselling author of Saturday and Atonement brilliantly illuminates the collision of sexual longing, deep-seated fears and romantic fantasy in his unforgettable, emotionally engaging novel. The year is 1962. Florence, the daughter of a successful businessman and an aloof Oxford academic, is a talented violinist. She dreams of a career on the concert stage and of the perfect life she will create with Edward, the earnest young history student she met by chance and who unexpectedly wooed her and won her heart. Edward grew up in the country on the outskirts of Oxford where his father, the headmaster of the local school, struggled to keep the household together and his mother, brain-damaged from an accident, drifted in a world of her own. Edward’s native intelligence, coupled with a longing to experience the excitement and intellectual fervour of the city, had taken him to University College in London. Falling in love with the accomplished, shy and sensitive Florence—and having his affections returned with equal intensity—has utterly changed his life. Their marriage, they believe, will bring them happiness, the confidence and the freedom to fulfill their true destinies. The glowing promise of the future, however, cannot totally mask their worries about the wedding night. Edward, who has had little experience with women, frets about his sexual prowess. Florence’s anxieties run deeper: she is overcome by conflicting emotions and a fear of the moment she will surrender herself. From the precise and intimate depiction of two young lovers eager to rise above the hurts and confusion of the past, to the touching story of how their unexpressed misunderstandings and fears shape the rest of their lives, On Chesil Beach is an extraordinary novel that brilliantly, movingly shows us how the entire course of a life can be changed—by a gesture not made or a word not spoken.

(Im)politeness in McEwan’s Fiction

Author : Urszula Kizelbach
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3031186907
Total Pages : 239 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (311 download)

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Book Synopsis (Im)politeness in McEwan’s Fiction by : Urszula Kizelbach

Download or read book (Im)politeness in McEwan’s Fiction written by Urszula Kizelbach and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-02-22 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a pragma-stylistic study of Ian McEwan’s fiction, providing a qualitative analysis of his selected novels using (im)politeness theory. (Im)politeness is investigated on two levels of analysis: the level of the plot and the story world (intradiegetic level) and the level of the communication between the implied author and implied reader in fiction (extradiegetic level). The pragmatic theory of (im)politeness serves the aim of internal characterisation and helps readers to better understand and explain the characters’ motivations and actions, based on the stylistic analysis of their speech and thoughts and point of view. More importantly, the book introduces the notion of “the impoliteness of the literary fiction” – a state of affairs where the implied author (or narrator) expresses their impolite beliefs to the reader through the text, which has face-threatening consequences for the audience, e.g. moral shock or disgust, dissociation from the protagonist, feeling hurt or ‘put out’. Extradiegetic impoliteness, one of the key characteristics of McEwan’s fiction, offers an alternative to the literary concept of “a secret communion of the author and reader” (Booth 1961), describing an ideal connection, or good rapport, between these two participants of fictional communication. This book aims to unite literary scholars and linguists in the debate on the benefits of combining pragmatics and stylistics in literary analysis, and it will be of interest to a wide audience in both fields.

The Cambridge Companion to Ian McEwan

Author : Dominic Head
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108570380
Total Pages : 233 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (85 download)

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Book Synopsis The Cambridge Companion to Ian McEwan by : Dominic Head

Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Ian McEwan written by Dominic Head and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-07-04 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Companion showcases the best scholarship on Ian McEwan's work, and offers a comprehensive demonstration of his importance in the canon of international contemporary fiction. The whole career is covered, and the connections as well as the developments across the oeuvre are considered. The essays offer both an assessment of McEwan's technical accomplishments and a sense of the contextual factors that have provided him with inspiration. This volume has been structured to highlight the points of intersection between literary questions and evaluations, and the treatment of contemporary socio-cultural issues and topics. For the more complex novels - such as Atonement - this book offers complementary perspectives. In this respect, The Cambridge Companion to Ian McEwan serves as a prism of interpretation, revealing the various interpretive emphases each of McEwan's more complex works invite, and to show how his various recurring preoccupations run through his career.

Saturday

Author : Ian McEwan
Publisher : Vintage Canada
ISBN 13 : 0307371220
Total Pages : 290 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (73 download)

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Book Synopsis Saturday by : Ian McEwan

Download or read book Saturday written by Ian McEwan and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2009-02-24 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Dazzling. . . . Profound and urgent" —Observer "A book of great maturity, beautifully alive to the fragility of happiness and all forms of violence. . . . Everyone should read Saturday" —Financial Times Saturday, February 15, 2003. Henry Perowne, a successful neurosurgeon, stands at his bedroom window before dawn and watches a plane—ablaze with fire like a meteor—arcing across the London sky. Over the course of the following day, unease gathers about Perowne, as he moves among hundreds of thousands of anti-war protestors who’ve taken to the streets in the aftermath of 9/11. A minor car accident brings him into confrontation with Baxter, a fidgety, aggressive man, who to Perowne’s professional eye appears to be profoundly unwell. But it is not until Baxter makes a sudden appearance at the Perowne family home that Henry’s earlier fears seem about to be realized. . .

Enduring Love

Author : Ian McEwan
Publisher : Vintage Canada
ISBN 13 : 0307366995
Total Pages : 280 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (73 download)

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Book Synopsis Enduring Love by : Ian McEwan

Download or read book Enduring Love written by Ian McEwan and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2010-07-20 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In one of the most striking opening scenes ever written, a bizarre ballooning accident and a chance meeting give birth to an obsession so powerful that an ordinary man is driven to the brink of madness and murder by another's delusions. Ian McEwan brings us an unforgettable story—dark, gripping, and brilliantly crafted—of how life can change in an instant.

The New Southern Gentleman

Author : Jim Booth
Publisher : Watchmaker Publishing
ISBN 13 : 9780972178600
Total Pages : 236 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (786 download)

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Book Synopsis The New Southern Gentleman by : Jim Booth

Download or read book The New Southern Gentleman written by Jim Booth and published by Watchmaker Publishing. This book was released on 2002 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Daniel Randolph Deal is a Southern aristocrat, having the required bloodline, but little of the nobility. A man resistant to the folly of ethics, he prefers a selective, self-indulgent morality. He is a confessed hedonist, albeit responsibly so."--Back cover

Lessons

Author : Ian McEwan
Publisher : Knopf
ISBN 13 : 0593535219
Total Pages : 495 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (935 download)

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Book Synopsis Lessons by : Ian McEwan

Download or read book Lessons written by Ian McEwan and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2022-09-13 with total page 495 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • A NEW YORKER ESSENTIAL READ • From the best-selling author of Atonement and Saturday comes the epic and intimate story of one man's life across generations and historical upheavals. From the Suez Crisis to the Cuban Missile Crisis, the fall of the Berlin Wall to the current pandemic, Roland Baines sometimes rides with the tide of history, but more often struggles against it. A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Vogue • The New Yorker “Masterful.... McEwan is a storyteller at the peak of his powers…. One of the joys of the novel is the way it weaves history into Roland’s biography…. The pleasure in reading this novel is letting it wash over you.” —Associated Press When the world is still counting the cost of the Second World War and the Iron Curtain has closed, eleven-year-old Roland Baines's life is turned upside down. Two thousand miles from his mother's protective love, stranded at an unusual boarding school, his vulnerability attracts piano teacher Miss Miriam Cornell, leaving scars as well as a memory of love that will never fade. Now, when his wife vanishes, leaving him alone with his tiny son, Roland is forced to confront the reality of his restless existence. As the radiation from Chernobyl spreads across Europe, he begins a search for answers that looks deep into his family history and will last for the rest of his life. Haunted by lost opportunities, Roland seeks solace through every possible means—music, literature, friends, sex, politics, and, finally, love cut tragically short, then love ultimately redeemed. His journey raises important questions for us all. Can we take full charge of the course of our lives without causing damage to others? How do global events beyond our control shape our lives and our memories? And what can we really learn from the traumas of the past? Epic, mesmerizing, and deeply humane, Lessons is a chronicle for our times—a powerful meditation on history and humanity through the prism of one man's lifetime.

The Children Act

Author : Ian McEwan
Publisher : Random House
ISBN 13 : 1473513278
Total Pages : 32 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (735 download)

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Book Synopsis The Children Act by : Ian McEwan

Download or read book The Children Act written by Ian McEwan and published by Random House. This book was released on 2014-09-02 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliant, emotionally wrenching new novel from the author of Atonement and Amsterdam. Fiona Maye, a leading High Court judge, renowned for her fierce intelligence and sensitivity is called on to try an urgent case. For religious reasons, a seventeen-year-old boy is refusing the medical treatment that could save his life. Time is running out. She visits the boy in hospital – an encounter which stirs long-buried feelings in her and powerful new emotions in the boy. But it is Fiona who must ultimately decide whether he lives or dies and her judgement will have momentous consequences for them both.

The Cement Garden

Author : Ian McEwan
Publisher : RosettaBooks
ISBN 13 : 0795302592
Total Pages : 154 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (953 download)

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Book Synopsis The Cement Garden by : Ian McEwan

Download or read book The Cement Garden written by Ian McEwan and published by RosettaBooks. This book was released on 2011-02-08 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Orphaned siblings create a macabre secret world for themselves in this “irresistibly readable” novel by the New York Times-bestselling author (The New York Review of Books). This “powerful and disconcerting” novel by the Booker Prize-winning author of The Children Act and Atonement (The Daily Telegraph) tells the story of a dying family who live in a dying part of the city. A father of four children decides, in an effort to make his garden easier to control, to pave it over. In the process, he has a heart attack and dies, leaving the cement garden unfinished and the children to the care of their mother. Soon after, the mother too dies and the children, fearful of being separated by social services, decide to cover up their parents’ deaths: they bury their mother in the cement garden. The story is told from the point of view of Jack, one of the sons, who is entering adolescence with all of its attendant curiosity and appetites. Julie, the eldest, is almost a grown woman. Sue is rather bookish and observes all that goes on around her. And Tom is the youngest and the baby of the lot. The children seem to manage in this perverse setting rather well—until Julie brings home a boyfriend who threatens their secret by asking too many questions. “[A] beautiful but disturbing novel.”—The AV Club “McEwan’s evocative detail and perfect British prose lend a genteel decorum to the death and decay that surround the family.”—The New Yorker

Sister, Mother And Lover: The family roles of Julie in Ian McEwan’s "The Cement Garden"

Download Sister, Mother And Lover: The family roles of Julie in Ian McEwan’s

Author : Ismail Durgut
Publisher : GRIN Verlag
ISBN 13 : 3640403215
Total Pages : 15 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (44 download)

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Book Synopsis Sister, Mother And Lover: The family roles of Julie in Ian McEwan’s "The Cement Garden" by : Ismail Durgut

Download or read book Sister, Mother And Lover: The family roles of Julie in Ian McEwan’s "The Cement Garden" written by Ismail Durgut and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2009-08-18 with total page 15 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Literature, Works, grade: 2.0, University of Duisburg-Essen, language: English, abstract: In [Ian McEwan’s] The Cement Garden a prominent interpretative signpost is bestowed by the literary allusion to the story tradition in which children are put into a situation in which they must fend for themselves. The key reference here is to William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, a pessimistic tale of savage that emerges within the child when free of social controls. However, the children in McEwan’s novel are not entirely cut from society. They try to keep their sense of family together by entombing their dead mother in concrete in the cellar of their isolated house. Moreover, all of them are influenced by adult codes of familial behavior. These codes become distorted in their independent existence, a process that culminates in the incestuous involvement of the eldest siblings. While Sue, the younger sister of the first-person narrator Jack, does not change visibly, Jack himself runs through a metamorphosis in terms of hygiene and outward appearance as such. Tom, the youngest, starts dressing up as a girl and later on behaves like a toddler and Julie, the eldest, takes over the responsibility for the others and turns from sister to mother. At the end of the story, she even becomes Jack’s lover. The following paper will discuss the different family roles of Julie. First, there will be a chapter on how Jack views his elder sister. This shall function as an overview of Julie’s character. The main part of this paper will present Julie’s changing family roles from sister to mother and finally to lover. The oedipal theme linked to that, will not be made a subject of discussion in this paper. A conclusion will follow the summary in the final chapter.

The Innocent

Author : Ian McEwan
Publisher : Anchor
ISBN 13 : 0307761029
Total Pages : 303 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (77 download)

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Book Synopsis The Innocent by : Ian McEwan

Download or read book The Innocent written by Ian McEwan and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2010-12-22 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A member of a British-American surveillance team in Cold War Berlin finds himself in too deep in this "wholly entertaining" work (The Wall Street Journal) from the Booker Prize winner and bestselling author of Atonement. Twenty-five-year-old Leonard Marnham’s intelligence work—tunneling under a Russian communications center to tap the phone lines to Moscow—offers him a welcome opportunity to begin shedding his own unwanted innocence, even if he is only a bit player in a grim international comedy of errors. His relationship with Maria Eckdorf, an enigmatic and beautiful West Berliner, likewise promises to loosen the bonds of his ordinary life. But the promise turns to horror in the course of one terrible evening—a night when Marnham learns just how much of his innocence he's willing to shed. Don’t miss Ian McEwan’s new novel, Lessons.

Childhood in the Contemporary English Novel

Author : Sandra Dinter
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000692051
Total Pages : 364 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (6 download)

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Book Synopsis Childhood in the Contemporary English Novel by : Sandra Dinter

Download or read book Childhood in the Contemporary English Novel written by Sandra Dinter and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-10-10 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the 1980s novels about childhood for adults have been a booming genre within the contemporary British literary market. Childhood in the Contemporary English Novel offers the first comprehensive study of this literary trend. Assembling analyses of key works by Ian McEwan, Doris Lessing, P. D. James, Nick Hornby, Sarah Moss and Stephen Kelman and situating them in their cultural and political contexts, Sandra Dinter uncovers both the reasons for the current popularity of such fiction and the theoretical shift that distinguishes it from earlier literary epochs. The book’s central argument is that the contemporary English novel draws on the constructivist paradigm shift that revolutionised the academic study of childhood several decades ago. Contemporary works of fiction, Dinter argues, depart from the notion of childhood as a naturally given phase of life and examine the agents, interests and conflicts involved in its cultural production. Dinter also considers the limits of this new theoretical impetus, observing that authors and scholars alike, even when they claim to conceive of childhood as a construct, do not always give up on the idea of its ‘natural’ core. Accordingly, this book reconstructs how the English novel between the 1980s and the 2010s oscillates between an acknowledgment of constructivism and an endorsement of childhood as the last irrevocable quintessence of humanity. In doing so, it successfully extends the literary and cultural history of childhood to the immediate present.