The Child in Time captures everything that I love about Ian McEwan and everything that I dislike. A novel with an simple but intriguing premise, it feels like it has so much promise in its riveting opening scene. But as the novel wears on, it wears out its welcome early, only to regain momentum in the end--though it's hard to tell if the resolution really is too little too late.

McEwan's protagonist is Stephen Lewis, a writer of children's books whose daughter, in a scene that occurs two years before the main action, is abducted from his in a supermarket. The girl is never found, and he and his wife Julie find that the trajectories of their guilt lead them in vastly different directions. As Stephen must deal with his temporary position on a government committee trying to draft a book on child-care, as well as the sudden resignation of his friend and colleague Charles Darke, he finds his life spiraling out of control.

Okay, perhaps I've characterized that a bit melodramatically. The truth is that the novel's strength is that, given such an exceptionally strong premise, the first half plods along at an almost intolerable pace. For someone who has just lost his daughter, Stephen is prone to chronic inaction, and McEwan represents this by having him meditate for long passages on complex psychological and scientific issues--as if McEwan was desperate to justify the "Time" part of the title. It's all a bit heavy-handed, and results in a novel that reads quickly at the start, then gets bogged down in the middle, almost to the point of disinterest.

The novel's second half is a totally different story. Several of the subtle subplots, particularly with regards to Charles and his sudden reversion to childhood fancies, are revealed to be part of a larger plan, and McEwan proves that he does have a strong sense of where he wants the novel to go. But there remain moments so inexplicable, so manufactured, that they confound rather than impress the reader. The story of his parents' meeting, while interesting, doesn't seem to go anywhere, and the final scene, while touching, feels too artificial and constructed to truly have much emotional impact. The increase in action is sure worth appreciating, yes, but it's hard to say if it actually redeems the novel as a whole.

I've always felt like McEwan is a talented though uneven writer, and The Child in Time encapsulates this tendency in 263 pages. Each moment feels a little too calculated, a little too manufactured, the result being a novel that strives to be as heartfelt and genuine as possible but nevertheless comes off as false and frustrating. A worthy read, but don't be surprised if it tries your patience--it may not be what you expect it to be.

very sad, a child disappears and the parents never find out what happened ( )

Every parent's nightmare dealt with suprisingly deftly by McEwan, who sometimes has a tendency to become playfully melodramatic. But here the inevitable break of the marriage and the falling apart of personality and the slow dulling of time are all expertly recorded. A poignant and sad book reflecting on the relationship of effect and causality. ( )

I first came across this book when taking my English literature A-levels in 1994. It remains one of the few books that I have studied in depth and still totally and utterly adore. It has so many levels. Each time I read it (and I've read it a few times now) it gets better, even though I know exactly what's going to happen. For me, this is novel writing at its best. Prosaic, haunting, real, emotional and with a wry humour. I can accept that this is a polarizing book: people either love or hate it and it is not an easy read. Stick with it, though, and the rewards are great. ( )

I don't think this is a book to be read only once.

Why: The pace and main settings/characters shift pretty distinctly a couple of times over the course of the novel, and the reader who looks for a linear sort of plot development will be disappointed (if not annoyed).

It's not giving anything away to say that a child disappears; that's laid out right on the back cover and happens within the first few pages. So one might expect this to become the driving force behind the plot: who took the kid, where is she, will the parents ever find her again...?

But this is less a detective story than a chronicle of how the somewhat miserable main character watches his life fall apart in the kidnapping's aftermath.

If I did read the book a second time (possibly this summer) I would watch for whether or not McEwan may have snuck in any subtly cohesive plot devices that I missed on the first read. For instance, I wonder if perhaps he interwove gestures toward different stages of grief (eg Stages of Grief) throughout this meandering, somewhat unconventional plot. A device like that might help me understand why and how McEwan chose to include such vastly different (but not unconnected) characters and scenes: the husband and wife, the parents, the political world, institutionalized school-related settings, a pub lost in time, a treehouse...

During a reread, I would also make a list of the overt questions this book raises about childhood and about loss. Some seem grand (as time passes, where does the past go?) and others are more particular (how is it different to lose a child than to lose an old friend?) Can looking at one's parents differently change your own sense of identity? And what role does the state (or rather the wackos who may make up institutional bodies) play in the definition and identity formation of its citizens/subjects/children...?

To sum up, The Child in Time was not, for me, as immediately gratifying as Atonement or On Chesil Beach; those two resist gratifying the reader also, in different ways. But I did enjoy it anyway, especially upon getting to the end and trying to figure out how I felt -- same as I did after finishing Atonement and Chesil. The Child in Time just comes off as more experimental, in my opinion, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. ( )