It is easy, then, to think of those five years as being a chrysalis-like period for McEwan, with the writer who finally emerged in 1997 being a far sunnier and more stylish proposition. Black Dogs, a poetical meditation on violence – that ‘disease of the human imagination’ – represents a fitting end to the first act, with its talk of black dogs that ‘will return to haunt us one day, somewhere in Europe, in another time.’ Enduring Love represented a new focus on science and rationality, even if it was a novel based around a made-up psychological disorder, De Clerambault’s syndrome. The five years between Black Dogs (1992) and Enduring Love (1997). The disintegration of his first marriage to the faith healer, Allen, which culminated in her absconding to France with one of their children (McEwan had been granted sole custody, as well as a thousand pounds for defamation of his character), led to the longest period between novels in McEwan’s career. The Penny Allen years and the Annalena McAfee years. Ian McEwan’s oeuvre can be split into two distinct phases: pre and post-divorce.
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