{"id":63,"date":"2008-01-16T00:18:08","date_gmt":"2008-01-16T05:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/punyamishra.com\/2008\/01\/16\/the-innocent\/"},"modified":"2022-07-29T13:59:47","modified_gmt":"2022-07-29T20:59:47","slug":"the-innocent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/punyamishra.com\/2008\/01\/16\/the-innocent\/","title":{"rendered":"The Innocent"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full is-style-default\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"170\" height=\"261\" src=\"https:\/\/punyamishra.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/theinnocent.gif\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-9800\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p> I first read Ian McEwan many years ago (in the 80&#8217;s I think) when he wrote grim and macabre novels and short stories, full of strange dark humor. I found him somewhat interesting but not enough to seek out his books. And then, years later, this past fall I read <strong>Atonement<\/strong>, and it just blew me away. In quick succession I finished <strong>Saturday<\/strong> and now <strong>The Innocent.<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>The Innocent <\/em>is one of McEwan&#8217;s first commercial successes and it contains some of the old McEwan in descriptions of genuine horror, but it also reveals the new McEwan, a sensitive, truthful writer, with an immense and deep understanding of human psyche and the skills to capture and convey that understanding. Set in a post world war, and very much in the cold-war, Berlin, the Innocent is both a spy story and a love story rendered in an objective and yet sensitive prose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>The Innocent <\/em>is not a great novel by any stretch of the imagination. It does, however, point to McEwan&#8217;s immense talents that would culminate in the writing of <em>Atonement<\/em>. (<em>Atonement<\/em> deserves a posting on its own.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I first read Ian McEwan many years ago (in the 80&#8217;s I think) when he wrote grim and macabre novels and short stories, full of strange dark humor. I found him somewhat interesting but not enough to seek out his books. And then, years later, this past fall I read Atonement, and it just blew [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/punyamishra.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/punyamishra.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/punyamishra.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/punyamishra.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/punyamishra.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/punyamishra.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9801,"href":"https:\/\/punyamishra.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions\/9801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/punyamishra.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/punyamishra.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/punyamishra.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}