Joe Rose has planned a postcard-perfect afternoon in the English countryside to celebrate his lover's return after six weeks in the States. To complete the picture, there's even a "helium balloon drifting dreamily across the wooded valley." But as Joe and Clarissa watch the balloon touch down, their idyll comes to an abrupt end. The pilot catches his leg in the anchor rope, while the only passenger, a boy, is too scared to jump down. As the wind whips into action, Joe and four other men rush to secure the basket. Mother Nature, however, isn't feeling very maternal. "A mighty fist socked the balloon in two rapid blows, one-two, the second more vicious than the first," and at once the rescuers are airborne. Joe manages to drop to the ground, as do most of his companions, but one man is lifted sky-high, only to fall to his death.

In itself, the accident would change the survivors' lives, filling them with an uneasy combination of shame, happiness, and endless self-reproach. (In one of the novel's many ironies, the balloon eventually lands safely, the boy unscathed.) But fate has far more unpleasant things in store for Joe. Meeting the eye of fellow rescuer Jed Parry, for example, turns out to be a very bad move. For Jed is instantly obsessed, making the first of many calls to Joe and Clarissa's London flat that very night. Soon he's openly shadowing Joe and writing him endless letters. (One insane epistle begins, "I feel happiness running through me like an electrical current. I close my eyes and see you as you were last night in the rain, across the road from me, with the unspoken love between us as strong as steel cable.") Worst of all, Jed's version of love comes to seem a distortion of Joe's feelings for Clarissa.

Apart from the incessant stalking, it is the conditionals--the contingencies--that most frustrate Joe, a scientific journalist. If only he and Clarissa had gone straight home from the airport... If only the wind hadn't picked up... If only he had saved Jed's 29 messages in a single day... Ian McEwan has long been a poet of the arbitrary nightmare, his characters ineluctably swept up in others' fantasies, skidding into deepening violence, and--worst of all--becoming strangers to those who love them. Even his prose itself is a masterful and methodical exercise in defamiliarization. But Enduring Love and its underrated predecessor, Black Dogs, are also meditations on knowledge and perception as well as brilliant manipulations of our own expectations. By the novel's end, you will be surprisingly unafraid of hot-air balloons, but you won't be too keen on looking a stranger in the eye. --This text refers to the hardcover edition of this title

The Wall Street Journal, Brooke Allen

Every marriage or relationship, however strong it might seem, is in reality a delicate construction, and this cleverly imagined, beautifully executed piece of fiction is a cold reminder of that fact. It is also a pleasure to read: Mr. McEwan is a consummate professional, and for erudition, slickness (in the best sense of the word) and just plain smarts, he has few peers. --This text refers to the hardcover edition of this title

The New York Times Book Review, Sven Birkerts

Though it is a tour de force, McEwan's feat of creation and interpretation is finally less memorable in any of its specifics than is the mystery of Jed Parry and his syndrome, and the unalleviated intensity with which Parry pursues his course.... The deeper implications of McEwan's novel begin to reach us just when we want to believe that all erratic forms of behavior haven been tagged and dealt with. --This text refers to the hardcover edition of this title read more

Slate, Alice Truax

The conclusion of Enduring Love, appropriately enough, proves impossible to foresee. Ingeniously rewarding and unusually contingent on the intellectual curiosity of the reader, it offers a playful reprimand to anyone who assumes that they know where the "real" story of this novel begins and ends. --This text refers to the hardcover edition of this title