Amsterdam door Ian McEwan

Ian McEwan: Amsterdam

Their friendship is tested to the limits.

The story begins at Molly Lane’s funeral. Two former lovers, Clive Linley and Vernon Halliday, meet there to express their sympathy. After a few days, they pick up their normal lifes, Clive as a successful componist and Vernon as editor of an important broadsheet, The Judge. They have the same enemy: Julian Garmony who is trying to become Prime Minister. One day the widower of Molly, George Lane, tells Vernon he has something special he wants to show him. It turns out to be pictures from Garmony in a very strange pose; cat-walk style like a travestite and dressed up like a woman. George tells him that Molly took these pictures. Of course Vernon know this is something he can blackmail Garmony with. Clive has something important to ask at Vernon: he asks him that if he becomes ill and when he’s still aware of it, that if Vernon would release him from his pain. He needs to think about it but later on he agrees with it only if Clive would do the same for him too. When Clive sees the pictures, Vernon tells him he wants to publish them in The Judge. Clive doesn’t think this is a good idea and he warns him that this is private and that he’d betray Molly if he’d publish them. They get a row about it. So their ways separate temporarily. Clive goes on a trip to the mountains where he’s a witness of a man who is trying to beat her in a fight. Clive has to make a decision: or he goes to help the woman or he leaves for his work and pretends like he was never there. So he leaves. Vernon forces Clive to tell the police about what he saw but he refuses. Later Garmony’s wife gives a press conference wherein she says she knows about the pictures Vernon Halliday is going to produce but she tells everybody about their “happy family” and that Garmony isn’t evil at all. She also calls Vernon “The Flea”. Now everybody knows about the pictures even before they have been published. Clive gets the police at his door because of Vernon. But he helps them and the suspect is caught. Later on, Clive goes to Amsterdam because there is an orchestra that will play his passages. He’s very happy to hear his own music their. Meanwhile in London, Vernon is still workless and everybody hates for what he has been doing. He regrets his row with Clive and comes over to Amsterdam. They meet at the reception of the orchestra but neither of them has got good meanings. Clive puts a white powder into Vernon’s drink and Vernon does the same with Clive’s drink. The become friends again, unaware of the outher’s death. That night they both die because of their own thoughts and wrong decisions they have made.