“Enduring Love gracefully bridges genres; it’s a psychological thriller, a meditation on the narrative impulse, a novel of ideas.” With close reference to the text, explore McEwan’s use of key features and conventions of different genres of writing. What impact does this have on the reader?
Enduring Love contains many generic conventions that do all appear to slide into one another, to make an altogether un-conventional story. I am going to explore these genres and types of writing in the book, in order to extract their key features and conventions and gain a better understanding into what grips the reader whilst reading the novel.
Although not immediately obvious, Enduring Love has many generic conventions from the detective and crime genres. We have our first glimpse of some kind of detective story when Joe first calls the police, in chapter eight. This appears to subside, (although it is mentioned more than three times; there is no contact with the police), until we reach chapter eighteen. Here Joe actually goes to the police station and we have the convention of a police interview. The policeman himself is a conventional character-he has a ‘large round face’, and seems quite disinterested in Joe’s complaint. The police station is described as a worn down, fairly lazy place, with ‘friction, and a great deal of general wear and tear’. This fits the convention of a worn police station, often seen in gritty crime dramas, and thrilling detective novels. The next chapter describes a shooting in a restaurant. The intensity and heavy description of the event is one that adds to all of the genres. This scene has the conventions of such a scene from a crime novel, or film. It has disguised assassins and shocked on-lookers. ‘I did not believe what I was seeing. Clichés are rooted in truth: I did not believe my eyes.’ This line shows that McEwan is trying to get these clichés, these conventions, across to the reader. A repeat of the police station conventions follow in chapter twenty. The interview in the interview room, the two people either side of the table. These things are used to great effect by McEwan. A little bit later on in this chapter we have a brief outline of Joe’s old friend; Johnny B Well’s criminal connections. This takes us deeper into the London underworld, with conventions of gangsters and drug dealings. These conventions would very likely appear in a crime film. These conventions continue as we reach chapter twenty-one, when we meet Johnny as he goes with Joe to a house in Surrey, which we are led to believe is the home of some rough gangster types, but they turn out to be un-intentionally comical ex-hippies. The tension is enhanced by the description of the house, and also the reason why they are there; to buy a gun. Although the tense dangerous atmosphere is broken a bit when Joe has to go outside in order to avoid ruining the deal by laughing at the whole set up. The tension is once again raised when Joe produces the money for the gun. Steve, (one of the ex-hippies) immediately grabs it, much to Xan’s (another ex-hippy) annoyance. Xan ends up with Steve in a headlock because he wont put the money back on the table. Joe desperately tries to stop Xan. The anger and violence of this scene does seem like a story of organised crime. After they get the gun, Joe and Johnny decide it’s best to go. The adrenaline is still running high for Joe when he arrives back at the car and gets a call from Jed who is, as we later find out, holding Clarissa as a hostage. He ends up cutting his throat in front of Clarissa and Joe, in their apartment. McEwan’s use of the characters of the desperate criminal, the dabbler in arms trade and the victimised hostage, is very effective. This whole roller coaster plot, is intense; like a crime film or novel. But the last scene, is also like something from a different genre: thriller.
