Venice has never seemed so enticing as the book is set well before the influx of cruise ships and mobile phones. It seems a lot less crowded. Tourists yes, but they never get in the way. Miss Julia Garnet, spinster and retiring teacher, is a wonderful character in the hands of this great writer, and the characters she meets on a prolonged break are all interesting, especially Monsignore Giuseppe, the small ugly but brilliant priest who becomes a friend later in the book. When Julia is embarrassed about an early encounter that disturbs her heart, he tells he "The heart is a breeder of embarrassment. But we are all of us imbeciles in this area, that you can rely on".
Wound into Miss Garnet's "adventures" are extracts from The Book of Tobit, part of what is called the Apocrypha. These are ancient stories from before the old testament, if I got that right. Whilst I found these boring at first, they gradually take on an exciting significance to the story. Miss Garnet's early visit to the priest explains the origins of the Chiesa Dell' Angelo Raffaele, the small plague church that is so integral to the plot. But it is Charles Cutforth (he and his wife Cynthia also become friends) asks "How much of that is bullshit", to which the Monsignore replies "One should never dismiss bullshit, Carlo. The greatest truths lie in improbable stories. Look at the Gospels!".
So whenever the Monsignore appears, he is witty as well as clever. "You could have knocked me down with a feather from the wing of the Holy Ghost". He ends up being a miracle of fiction. This is an emotional book written with intelligent prose. Well researched and unforgettable.
After his last two easy reads ("The Children Act" and "Nutshell") Ian McEwan ventures into the murky world of artificial intelligence and robotics. At times his prose simulates the intellectual background found in Adam, "the first truly viable manufactured human". His owner is Charlie, in love with Miranda who occupies the upstairs flat, and who, together, embark on life with their new friend. But Adam is learning all the time, complications are bound to follow.
McEwan takes advantage of Adam's progress as he pontificates on many of life's mysteries. At one point Adam describes at length the end of literature when "the marriage of men and women to machines is complete......we'll inhabit a community of minds to which we have immediate access".
However, it's Miranda's secret (the cause of her earlier reticence and distance to Charlie), at last unveiled in one superb chapter, that takes the story to a new level. But can we trust that Adam's love for Miranda will keep her safe?
I have never known a book where I loved so much but hated the rest. For me, this is a book of two halves, starting and finishing as a superb fantasy drama, the middle third turns out to be something quite nasty. I just cannot handle the psychological abuse that our narrator, Lisa Evans, endures in the middle third. Most of that I skipped.
But when the author tales us on journeys around Peterborough and gives us lots of philosophy about life, she is at her best. There are even witticisms at times: "How alluring a supermarket seems when you haven't been in one for ages" and "A good marriage is all about judicial timing when it comes to the announcement of unwelcome information". Then about men she tells us "how sweet and baffling they were, how it was fine as long as you remembered that some of them had a limited range of emotions. It was all about managing your expectations ....... not asking too much of them or expecting one of them to be everything".
Somehow I didn't recognise the centre of Peterborough, even though I lived nearby for five years. But that was over forty years ago! I'm not sure if I ever went near the station where much of the book is set. Anyway, half of the book I loved and the other half I hated. It was just about worth it for the last part where the author wraps it up with some more lovely stuff. Why couldn't it be all like that?
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