Ian McEwan at the Royal Northern College of Music

The whole team of Bad Language went on a visit to the Royal Northern College of Music yesterday to see the lovely Ian McEwan reading from his new book Solar.

I have to admit I've never read an Ian McEwan book before but I was curious to see him speak and now I am burning to read his new book. He opened by stating that this novel was a character piece; he had a strong desire to create a piece that only revealed the characters past in the last 100 pages. He said that he found it interesting to explain a characters past after we have got to know the character and his actions.

An interesting discussion that came up was how important it is for a writer to be accurate with details? I believe that Ian McEwan spent 5 years researching the topic of his new novel; Climate Change. Despite this he claimed that he is still expecting complaints from readers of supposed inaccuracies. He used an example of one of his past novels where he placed a character in a car and described the action of them changing gears. From this minor detail he got a letter of complaint stating that his details we're inaccurate and the chosen car would not change gears in this way. He always raised the question: How easy is it for writers to point to facts in novels? Is it indeed risky business.

Despite this Ian McEwan stated that he loves writers who give the taste, feel and look of details. Perphaps this is what has lead to his need to get details correct and spent a long time researching the topic of a novel.

How powerful is poetry? This is a provocative question that a member of the audience and I was curious to know his answer, although I doubt that the answer to this question can ever be given a definitive answer. Ian McEwan doubted that poetry ould make anything happen on a national level, or change an issue such as climate change. But he did seem to point towards poetry having the power to change an individual, not a nation.

Ian McEwan is quite a witty man. Here is a few sound bites from him following his reading:

'If it ended too quickly it's because you're reading too fast.'

' The novel would be dead if women gave up reading.'

'With first person writing you have to do a strange rhetorical trick; it doesn't let you off the hook with writing well.'


If that still hasn't made you feel like reading his books, here's a few words that his audience related to his writing; sinister, 'blokey', sparse and carefully chosen. I wonder what words he would use to describe he own writing?

Book Review - The Wind Up Bird Chronicle

The Wind Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami has been part of my life for a while now; I've spent months savouring every moment in the hope that the story will last longer if you read slower.

The story at the heart of The Wind Up Bird is a simple one; a man who loses his wife and will do anything to get her back.A classic tale of love. The novel is spun into a series of intertwining stories set off by one seemingly meaningless event; the disappearance of a cat. My favourite thing about this book is the fact that it is enriched with stories within stories within stories.

A downfall of the book is a 2-D character called May based on a 14 year old girl who's dropped out of school. Although I believed in the character's persona at first, the novel never seemed to break through the '14 year old girl profile' and develop into a deeper person. This is emphasised later in the novel when May continues to write letters to the lead character, revealing pivotol information; which is withdrawn at the end when you realise the letters were never read.

The Wind Up Bird is full of Murakami's usual queer reasoning; where he never answers a question but always find a resolution; which is a quality in Murakami which you either love or hate. I enjoyed the journey of query after query after query until the final two chapters, when I feel Murakami uncharacteristically tried to find a satisfying resolution. It's not the resolutions that I disapproved of but the characters' actions which seemed against their personality in the final moments.

I have enjoyed having this book as being a part of my life and as a result will always sleep with a baseball bat beside my bed from now on....