When good-time, fortysomething Molly Lane dies of an unspecified degenerative illness, her many friends and numerous lovers are led to think about their own mortality. Vernon Halliday, editor of the upmarket newspaper the Judge, persuades his old friend Clive Linley, a self-indulgent composer of some reputation, to enter into a euthanasia pact with him. Should either of them be stricken with such an illness, the other will bring about his death. From this point onward we are in little doubt as to Amsterdam's outcome--it's only a matter of who will kill whom. In the meantime, compromising photographs of Molly's most distinguished lover, foreign secretary Julian Garmony, have found their way into the hands of the press, and as rumors circulate he teeters on the edge of disgrace. However, this is McEwan, so it is no surprise to find that the rather unsavory Garmony comes out on top. Ian McEwan is master of the writer's craft, and while this is the sort of novel that wins prizes, his characters remain curiously soulless amidst the twists and turns of plot. --Lisa Jardine

From Publishers Weekly
As swift as a lethal bullet and as timely as current headlines, McEwan's Booker Prize-winning novel is a mordantly clever?but ultimately too clever for its own good?exploration of ethical issues. Two longtime friends meet at the cremation of the woman they shared, beautiful restaurant critic and photographer Molly Lane. Clive Linley, a celebrated composer, and Vernon Halliday, the editor of a financially troubled London tabloid, could never understand Molly's third liaison?with conservative Foreign Secretary Julian Garmony, who is angling to be prime minister, or her marriage to dour but rich publisher George Lane. Mourning the manner of Molly's agonizing death, which left her mad and helpless at the end, each man pledges to dispatch the other by euthanasia should he be similarly afflicted. Immediately afterwards, both Clive and Vernon are enmeshed in a crisis: Clive must finish his commissioned Millennium Symphony so it can premiere in Amsterdam, and Vernon must grapple with the moral issue of publishing photos of Julian Garmony in drag that George has discovered with Molly's effects. The clash between whether the demands of pure art are more valid than political accountability and financial solvency soon assumes a larger dimension that turns Clive and Vernon into bitter enemies and inspires each of them to seek revenge by the same means. McEwan spins these plot developments with smooth alacrity and with acidulous wit, especially focused on the way shallow and mediocre people can occupy positions of power and esteem: "In his profession, Vernon was revered as a nonentity." His ability to sculpt a scene with such arresting visual detail that it assumes a physical dimension for the reader (most memorably in the opening of Enduring Love but also evident here as Clive observes a woman being accosted by a rapist, and as Vernon watches a TV interview that signals the end of his career) are undiminished. But when, in the last third of the book, McEwan manipulates the plot to achieve a less than credible symmetry, it is obvious that, despite the Booker recognition, this is far from McEwan's best novel. That said, however, it will undoubtedly hit the bestseller charts, for McEwan, even when not quite at the top of his form, is a writer of compelling gifts. Major ad/promo; author tour. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Funerals are dreary enough affairs, but Molly's is particularly unpleasant; her former lovers hover like vultures, ready to tear one another apart. Thanks to Molly?or rather to Molly's stuffy husband, made fun of by everyone but slick enough to get the last laugh?self-absorbed newspaper editor Vernon is about to get some scandalous goods on foreign secretary Julian Garmony, an evil family-rights type. But friend Clive, a composer of impeccable tastes, disgustedly thinks that Vernon is taking adavantage of Molly's memory, and Vernon is equally disgusted that Clive was so wrapped up with the final movement of his symphony that he failed to intervene in a potential rape. Their conflict proves quite literally fatal. McEwan has written a tastily vicious tale in his usual polished prose, but this time he risks too much and goes over the top. The whole affair seems a bit one-note and mean-spirited, and the maccabre ending in Amsterdam is not persuasive. This won the Booker Prize, which helps explain why the pub date was pushed up from February to November, but McEwan's last one, Enduring Love (LJ 2/1/98), was a better, more textured book. [Preveiwed in Prepub Alert, LJ 10/1/98.]?Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal.-?Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The New York Times, Michiko Kakutani
[In Amsterdam] are the simple pleasures of reading a writer in complete command of his craft, a writer who has managed to toss off this minor entertainment with such authority and aplomb that it has won him the recognition he has so long deserved.

The Washington Post Book World, Michael Dirda
Though McEwan addresses several serious themes--in particular, the conflict between personal desire and public responsibility--his ingenious conte cruel possesses the lightness of touch and split-second plotting of an operetta.... There is no huffing and puffing, no waste, no mess. Every sentence carries the fugue-like plot forward to the final catastrophe.

From AudioFile
Maxwell Caulfield has precisely the English voice and superb control needed to perform this gem of a novel. Ian McEwan writes for the ear, so this reading is a powerful aural experience, as well as an intellectual and emotional one. Funny, nasty and sad, the book won the 1998 Booker Prize; it's easy to see and hear why. The story opens at the funeral of Molly Lane, the sexy young journalist who slept with the newspaper editor; the famous composer; the foreign secretary; and even sometimes with the dour, ill-at-ease but immensely rich publisher to whom she was married. This is a short book, but her sudden, meaningless death will not be the last. B.H.C. An AudioFile Earphones Award winner. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Kirkus Reviews
Winner of this years Booker Prize, McEwans latest (Black Dogs, 1992; Enduring Love, 1998) is a smartly written tale that devolves slowly into tricks and soapy vapors. When she dies of a sudden, rapidly degenerative illness, London glamour photogra pher Molly Lane is married to rich British publisher George Lane, although numerous erstwhile lovers still live and stir in the controversial Mollys wake. These high- visibility figures include internationally famed composer Clive Linley, racing now to co mplete his overdue magnum opus, a new symphony for the millennium; his close friend Vernon Halliday, the liberal, ambitious, idealistic editor of a London newspaper thats struggling hard to keep its readership; and right-winger Thatcherite Julian Garmony, now Britains foreign secretary. The daily lives of these three high-profilersthough mostly of Clive and Vernon, who receive the main focusare nothing if not interesting in the capable hands of McEwan, who shows himself more than plentifully knowledgeable in the details of journalism and music, describing with a Masterpiece Theater color and exactness the torments of composition and the rigors of keeping a big newspaper in business. The machinery of plot gradually takes over, though, when George finds, in Mollys left-behind things, three wildly incriminating sex-photos of the foreign secretaryand makes them available to Vernon Halliday, for whom the idea of bringing down the conservative Garmony (whos considering a run for PM) by publishing the pictures i s irresistible. This plan of massive public humiliation, however, offends Clive Linley, who thinks of it as a deep betrayal of the dead Molly, and bitterness rises like a serpent in the Clive-Vernon friendship, hardly put to rest when Vernon learns of som ething morally dubious that Clives just doneand that could, in fact, be made a nifty tool of revenge. And so things progress via trick, counter-trick, and backfire, in a novelistic try for a big ending that just gets littler instead. Middle-brow fiction B ritish style, strong on the surface, vapid at the center. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review
Winner of the Booker Prize


"A dark tour de force, perfectly fashioned."
--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"A well-oiled machine....Ruthless and amusing."
--The New York Times Book Review

"Beautifully spare prose, wicked observation, and dark comic brio."
--The Boston Globe

"At once far-reaching and tightly self-contained, a fin de siécle phantasmagoria."
--New York

"Ian McEwan has proven himself to be one of Britain's most distinct voices and one of its most versatile talents....Chilling and darkly comic."
--Chicago Tribune

"By far his best work to date...an energizing tightrope between feeling and lack of feeling, between humanity's capacity to support and save and its equally ubiquitous penchant for detachment and cruelty."
--The San Diego Union-Tribune

"You won't find a more enjoyable novel...masterfully wrought, sure to delight a reader with even half a sense of humor." --The Atlant Journal-Constitution

"McEwan writes the sort of witty repartee and scathing retort we wished we thought of in the heat of battle. On a broader scale, McEwan's portrayal of the mutually parasitic relationship between politicians and journalists is as damning as it is comic." --The Christian Science Monitor


From the Trade Paperback edition.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

On a chilly February day, two old friends meet in the throng outside a crematorium to pay their last respects to Molly Lane. Both Clive Linley and Vernon Halliday had been Molly's lovers in the days before they reached their current eminence. Clive is Britain's most successful modern composer; Vernon is editor of the quality broadsheet The Judge. Gorgeous, feisty Molly had other lovers, too, notably Julian Garmony, Foreign Secretary, a notorious right-winger tipped to be the next prime minister. In the days that follow Molly's funeral, Clive and Vernon will make a pact with consequences neither has foreseen. Each will make a disastrous moral decision, their friendship will be tested to its limits, and Julian Garmony will be fighting for his political life.

A contemporary morality tale that is as profound as it is witty, this short novel is perhaps the most purely enjoyable fiction Ian McEwan has ever written. And why Amsterdam? What happens there to Clive and Vernon is the most delicious shock in a novel brimming with surprises.

FROM THE CRITICS

Ben Greenman

Like other...McEwan novels, Amsterdam is a good thing in a small package: pungent, philosophical and beautifully written.
-- Time Out New York

Gabriele Annan

Whatever McEwan writes about comes up fresh, luminous, and surprising...Amsterdam is funnier than anything he has written before.
-- The New York Review of Books

Nick Meyer

Ian McEwan's Amsterdam is at once far-reaching and tightly self-contained, a fin de siècle phantasmagoria that wraps up as neatly as a weekly sitcom.
-- New York Magazine

Daphne Merkin - The New Yorker

Mr. McEwan writes a distinctively unadorned prose that speeds the reader along, but slows every so often for a layered, luxuriant image.

Wall Street Journal