{"id":7275,"date":"2012-04-23T13:28:54","date_gmt":"2012-04-23T17:28:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=7275"},"modified":"2016-07-13T21:34:39","modified_gmt":"2016-07-14T01:34:39","slug":"ian-mcewan-hand-on-the-shoulder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2012\/04\/23\/ian-mcewan-hand-on-the-shoulder\/","title":{"rendered":"Ian McEwan: “Hand on the Shoulder”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Hand on the Shoulder\"<\/strong><\/span>\r\nby Ian McEwan<\/span>\r\nOriginally published in the\u00a0April 30, 2012 issue of\u00a0The New Yorker<\/em>.<\/span><\/pre>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
Another week, another excerpt from a popular, prize-winning author’s forthcoming novel.\u00a0The New Yorker<\/em>\u00a0disappoints again. There is a world of gifted short fiction authors out there who get ignored each week this magazine decides to market a new novel instead of cultivate the art of the short story. The short story is an art form far removed from the excerpt, but The New Yorker<\/em>\u00a0(is it more and more?) seems to treat short stories as primers, apprentice pieces, a precursor to \u00a0a novel proper.\u00a0What a reductive perspective. The short story need not be so humble. Fortunately, there are dozens of quality literary magazines out there publishing a generation of short story writers; it’s just too bad that their readership is a tiny fraction of that of The New Yorker<\/em>.<\/p>\n
So, “Hand on the Shoulder,” an excerpt from McEwan’s fall novel Sweet Tooth<\/em>. I haven’t been a fan of McEwan’s late work, but Sweet Tooth<\/em>\u00a0sounds interesting.\u00a0Here, quickly, is the current write-up on Amazon:<\/p>\n
The year is 1972. The Cold War has entered a moribund phase, but the fight against Communism goes on, especially in England’s cultural circles.<\/span><\/p>\n
Serena Frome, the beautiful daughter of an Anglican bishop, has just completed her maths degree at Cambridge. Her brief affair with one of her professors leads to an interview with MI5. Serena lands an assignment in Operation Sweet Tooth: the funding of artists and writers with whom MI5’s political views align. Her “target” is Tom Healey, a promising young writer. First she falls in love with his stories, then she begins to fall in love with the man. When his novella wins a prestigious prize, the deceit becomes too much for Serena to bear. But before she can confess, her cover is blown, scandalizing the literary world and crippling MI5’s efforts. Who blew the whistle and why? Ian McEwan will keep you guessing in this superbly deft and witty story of betrayal, intrigue, and love.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
“Hand on the Shoulder” covers the affair that leads Serena into MI5.\u00a0However, that she ends up at MI5, this being an excerpt rather than a fully fleshed short story, means next to nothing in the end, yet here’s how a story that ultimately is about an affair begins: “My name is Serena From (rhymes with “plume”), and forty years ago, in my final year at Cambridge, I was recruited by the British security service.”\u00a0It’s 1972, and the world is changing.\u00a0For one, her boyfriend Jeremy is the first openly gay person Serena knows, as the laws changed only five years earlier (they don’t remain boyfriend and girlfriend long).\u00a0The Cold War is in a “moribund phase.”\u00a0The very fact that a woman would be recruited into MI5 was a fairly unique event.\u00a0But Serena doesn’t really care about much of this — not yet.\u00a0She’s busy happily dealing with men from the old school.<\/p>\n
One day while she’s walking with Jeremy, his history tutor Tony Canning comes toward them and begins asking questions.\u00a0He was fifty-four and Serena twenty-one, and his questions and his authority were probably more directed at gaining her affections than pushing her into potential recruitment.\u00a0It worked.\u00a0That summer of 1972 becomes a golden age for Serena as she meets Canning at an out-of-the-way cottage each weekend for cooking, sex, and cultivation.\u00a0Canning’s is a heavy hand, and he began directing Serena’s reading, forcing her to read histories and newspapers (well, only the Times<\/em>) he chooses and give reports.\u00a0She gets better, but she doesn’t think any of it is as important — distant as it felt — as the affair going on in front of her.<\/p>\n
When I started reading the paper, the government’s fifth state of emergency was still months ahead of us.\u00a0I believed what I read, but it seemed remote.\u00a0Cambridge looked much the same, and so did the woods around the Cannings’ cottage.\u00a0Despite my history lessons, I felt I had no stake in the nation’s fate.\u00a0I owned one suitcase of clothes, fewer than fifty books, some childhood things in my bedroom home.\u00a0I had a lover who adored me and cooked for me and never threatened to leave his wife.\u00a0I had one obligation, a job interview — weeks away.\u00a0I was free.\u00a0So what was I doing, applying to help maintain the security of this ailing state, this sick man of Europe?\u00a0Nothing, I was doing nothing.\u00a0I didn’t know.\u00a0A chance had come my way, and I was taking it.\u00a0Tony wanted it, and I had little else going on.\u00a0So why not?<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I actually found “Hand on the Shoulder” interesting as it roamed around 1972 and the imminent change coming for both England and for Serena.\u00a0But this is all a setup.\u00a0In order to resolve this piece of “short fiction,” we need to leave behind the themes that make the story interesting and focus solely on the affair.\u00a0And it’s not that the affair isn’t interesting in and of itself: Canning is one of those older men who becomes infantile during sex.\u00a0“He was one of those Englishmen wrenched from Mummy at age seven and driven into numbing boarding-school exile.\u00a0They never acknowledge the damage, these poor fellows; they just live it.”\u00a0But the story goes in many directions, suitable to a novel, and we readers are forced to either get excited or not about that novel coming in November.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This week’s New Yorker story is Ian McEwan’s “Hand on the Shoulder.” Read the full post<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19336,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[328,94],"tags":[1061],"coauthors":[505],"class_list":["post-7275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ian-mcewan","category-new-yorker-fiction","tag-2012-new-yorker-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/Hand-on-the-Shoulder.jpg?fit=1200%2C1200&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-1Tl","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7275"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7275\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19344,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7275\/revisions\/19344"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7275"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=7275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}