Ian McEwan, former enfant terrible, controversial Booker winner, and undisputed elder statesman of contemporary English fiction celebrated his 75th birthday on June 21. As well as short stories and film scripts, he has written 16 novels over the past 45 years, which means there are a lot of books to choose from for this list, especially the lesser-read early ones. We have excluded his 2019 novella The Cockroach, partly because its length makes it not much more than a short story, and partly as an act of mercy. Do you prefer Atonement or Saturday? Here is a verdict on all 16 novels
16. The Cement Garden (1978)
McEwan’s debut reads like the apprentice work it was. He was still finding his way out of his early short stories about bad sex and grim lives. The sultry summer atmosphere is apt enough for a book about siblings who literally bury news of their mother’s death (in a trunk full of cement). It’s not really funny enough to be the black comedy it’s aiming for, but at least the much-vaunted incest happens only briefly, near the end.
15. Machines Like Me (2019)
“When are you going to stop going nuts?” Martin Amis asked McEwan when he published this science fiction novel set in an alternative 1980s featuring a robot lover who achieves hydraulic erections via a container of water in his right buttock (I know). You can’t knock McEwan’s willingness so late in his career to surprise us, and there is interesting stuff on our relationship with machines, but overall it’s too messy to succeed.
14. Amsterdam (1998)
It’s not McEwan’s fault that the novel that won him the Booker prize isn’t as good as the other four that were shortlisted. Amsterdam, his first out-and-out comedy, doesn’t claim to be more than a bagatelle, but nor does it live up to its literary inspiration of Evelyn Waugh. True, the comedy is pleasingly dark (it’s about a euthanasia pact between two frenemies), but the setting of 1990s political sex scandals feels dated and trivial.
13. Solar (2010)
Why do I rate McEwan’s comedies so low? He can be very funny within his novels, but when it’s the main vehicle for them he tends to come unstuck. The climate change story Solar has an agreeably annoying hero in the self-involved, five-times-married scientist Michael Beard, but the slapstick, adultery, murder-framing and, er, vomit are all a bit too Technicolor.
12. The Children Act (2014)
This short novel is the epitome of the straighter (ie duller) side of McEwan’s work. It’s heavily researched (this time on family law) and deep with moral issues: the high court judge Fiona Maye has to rule on a case in which a teenager’s parents refuse to let him have a life-saving blood transfusion on religious grounds. Maye is also struggling with her husband’s desire to have an affair. So even the sex element in this one is a bit ho-hum.
11. Sweet Tooth (2012)
McEwan’s ability (and desire) to write a satisfying plot has always set him apart from his closest peers, and this is one of his most page-turning novels. A spy story set in 1970s London featuring Serena Frome, the daughter of a bishop, it’s also softer and more purely enjoyable than his early, knottier books, even if the playful tricksiness — even silliness — at the heart of the story won’t please everyone.
10. On Chesil Beach (2007)
After the big, ambitious novels Atonement and Saturday, this was a much slighter proposal, but it fits a lot in. The virginal Edward and Florence’s honeymoon night is heading for disaster, and the backstory has hints why that might be. It’s also a picture of an era — 1962, the year before “sexual intercourse began”, as Larkin put it — and our honeymooners are victims of the time before it was cool to be young.
9. The Child in Time (1987)
This novel enabled McEwan to break out of his claustrophobic world of sex and nastiness. It struggles to balance its moral core (about a man whose missing child causes his marriage to collapse) with its stranger elements: a future setting, a friend who literally reverts to childhood and a genderless character. The whole thing feels clotted. But it proved that McEwan could stretch himself, and it laid the groundwork for his greatest books.
8. Nutshell (2016)
Out of unpromising material — an adultery, murder and revenge story based on Hamlet and narrated by a foetus (“here I am, upside down in a woman”) — McEwan crafted his most enjoyable novel in years. Nutshell is clever, funny and full of chewy thoughts that don’t get in the way of the story (much). As always with McEwan, terrible things happen to people, but that’s all part of the fun.
7. Saturday (2005)
Understandably ridiculed for the part where a violent criminal is overpowered by a recital of Matthew Arnold’s Dover Beach (why not just bash him on the head with The Oxford Book of English Verse?), this is nonetheless a virtuoso performance. A classic social realist novel set over one day in February 2003 — during Iraq war protests — it features some of McEwan’s strongest set pieces, enthralling the reader in everything from a delicate brain operation to an energetic squash game.
6. Lessons (2022)
No slowing down for McEwan, whose latest novel is his longest: an epic covering 80 years. It’s also partly autobiographical, taking in elements of McEwan’s childhood and his discovery late in life of a lost brother. He’s still into the chaos that sexual desire brings: his hero Roland’s life is directed by his experience of childhood abuse. As ever, the pages turn smoothly and there’s a deep satisfaction from watching an expert on his game.
5. The Innocent (1990)
McEwan’s Cold War thriller, set largely in a tunnel under Berlin in the 1950s, is all about innocence and experience. The hero, Leonard, learns about life the hard way: le Carré-style office politics, losing his virginity, and a violent confrontation with his girlfriend’s ex. There’s also comedy in it, as Leonard struggles around the city with a pair of suitcases for reasons it would be spoilerish to reveal. This is a gripper, and a keeper.
4. The Comfort of Strangers (1981)
McEwan’s second novel was his out-and-out nastiest yet delivered so engagingly and with such engrossing tension that it feels like a horrible pleasure. Two lovers on holiday in a Venice-like city are befriended by a photographer. McEwan’s ability to write about the ugly sides of masculinity and sex in a way no male writer does now is unsurpassed in this short masterpiece.
3. Enduring Love (1997)
From its breathless opening scene of a runaway hot air balloon, Enduring Love never lets up. But one of the rescuers, Joe Rose, finds himself being stalked by another, who has a mental illness that makes him think Joe is in love with him. We’re in master-at-work territory: this is rich, intelligent and thoughtful. A medical report in an appendix suggests it was based on a real case — or is this all part of McEwan’s fiction?
2. Black Dogs (1992)
This short book packs so much in, I reread it recently looking for secret trapdoors. It’s a compelling tale of good and evil, and a novel of ideas on rationalism versus superstition. Its central question — why people bend the facts to fit their ideas rather than the other way round — is evergreen. And it has several dramatic peaks: the fall of the Berlin Wall; violence in a restaurant; and the terrifying black dogs of the title.
1. Atonement (2001)
This is McEwan’s most famous novel for good reason. It comes in sections — country house drama, the bloodiness of war, and a character riddled with guilt and regret — which seems to be McEwan’s way of showing us how he can turn his hand to anything. The greatest coup, though, is in the final twist, which gives everything we’ve read new sense and depth. If only one McEwan novel survives to the next century, it will be this.