We realize from the beginning, though, that Edward and Florence are 'almost strangers. His ignorance of the first impenetrability and anger at second drives them apart on their wedding night. She remains impenetrable, in mind and in body. How woefully, disastrously wrong Edward is about Florence. Leonard of The Innocent reflects that Maria has 'the sort of face, the sort of manner, onto which men were likely to project their own requirements.' Edward in On Chesil Beach convinces himself that Florence's shyness was 'in all, part of the intricate depth of her personality, and proof of her quality,' what he imagines to be the 'veil for a richly sexual nature,' heightening his attraction. 'He had always known her, he knew nothing about her'-so Robbie muses in Atonement upon his encounter with Cecilia. Women glide through his books always with simultaneous familiarity and strangeness.

McEwan inherits the tradition knowingly (Richardson even gets a mention in McEwan's Atonement as being 'a fine psychologist'). Dalloway followed in subsequent centuries. It's a theme with a long history in literature-Samuel Richardson's Clarissa has been called the first and completest portrayal of consciousness Isabel Archer and Mrs. Tom's females are enigmas that fiction promises to expose. Betrayal elicits in Sebastian a maddening arousal: 'He is excited by that glance because it came from a stranger. He instead finds out that it was she who had taken their things and pawned them. A break-in occurs when the husband, Sebastian, is at work-or so his wife tells him. Or perhaps a memory.' He becomes desperate to know this imagined conscience its aloofness 'was a goad, a piercing enticement.' Another tale, 'Pawnography,' is about a marriage collapsing under the pressure of monotony and poverty. wrist turned outwards as she lost herself to an idea. He sees 'her' posing in a shop window, as if 'she was pursuing a thought. One of Tom's vignettes is about a man who falls in love with a mannequin. Even Philip Pullman Can't Save Grimms' Tales

Amsterdam novel by ian mcewan