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),?examining the multiple frames of their structure and meanings.
Contents
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Acknowledgements
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Introduction??
The author??????
The text: informed misreadings
The context
Critical approaches
Exemplifying the method: the early short stories??????
Exhibit 1: Homemade reading silence, reading against irony
Exhibit 2: Solid Geometry a story of deconstruction
Exhibit 3: Butterflies a story of the readers entrapment
Exhibit 4: Reflections of a Kept Ape metafiction par excellence
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I. Inverting Reality in Fiction: The Cement Garden
A dream within a dream????????
Liminal nightmares
Voices, visions, delusions
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II. Inverting Metafiction: The Comfort of Strangers
The oneiric city
Intimate strangers, monstrous doubles
The villains
The victims
The carnivorous city
Inverted metafiction
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III. Inverting Time: The Child in Time
Dystopia now
The voice and the eye
The time machine
The clock and The Bell
The forking paths: the conception scene
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