Boekverslag: The Innocent
NUMBER OF PAGES: 245 pages.
EXPLANATION OF THE TITLE: The title is mentioned a few times in this book. Leonard?s girlfriend Maria sometimes called him innocent, because when he first met her he was not at all familiar with girls and living in a big city.
Later in the story, when Leonard en Maria have killed Otto and cut him into pieces, Leonard keeps saying to himself that he is innocent. They had to do it, because they had only protected themselves against Otto. It had just been self-defence.
THEME: The young and inexperienced Leonard has to get used to living in a big city and has to learn to how to get on with girls.
Later the belief that he is innocent after having commited a crime.
PERSPECTIVE: This book is written in the he-perspective. The whole story is seen through the eyes of the main-person Leonard.
TIME: The time that goes by is about two years. From the moment Leonard arrives in Berlin untill he leaves Germany. The story played in the sixties.
Thirty years later Leonard comes back to Berlin to find Maria after he received her letter.
SUMMARY: Leonard Marnham comes to Berlin to work for the West-Germans and the American on a secret operation. The story playes just after the second worldwar so the east-west relation was not at all good. The West-Germans were going to build a tunnel to gain secret information from the Russians. Leonard was a technician, so he had to help them.
Their plan was to tap the information from the russian telephonelines.
Leonard?s first job was to unpack about 150 taperecorders, which they would put in the telephonelines. This job took four weeks.
On his first day in Berlin he met Bob Glass who also had an important job at the warehouse. That?s the place where they started to dig the tunnel. To the outside world they told that is was a radarstation.
After his first working-day he joins Glass and Russell to a bar called ?Resi?. Russell worked as an announcer for Voice of America and wrote bulletins for the West-Berlin radio service. While they were eating a woman wrote a letter to Leonard. She wants him to ask her for a dance. Leonard went to her and they talked and danced for a while.
One week later he visits her at her appartment. He first didn?t know if she would want to see him, but she did want to see him. This is how the relationship started.
Maria had already ones been maried, but divorced, because her ex-husband manhandled her.
After the four weeks Leonard had worked to unpack the tape-recorders, a man named John MacNamee asks him to help the other man in the tunnel. His job is to check the taps in the cables and the amplifiers with two other man.It is a very important job, because everything depended on them.
In his private life he stayed almost every night at Maria?s. That went on for a few months.
On time when Maria was tired she wanted him to leave but he didn?t. He became aggressive and pushed her against the wall and forced her to make love to him. Mria didn?t want to and was very afraid because it reminded her of something from the past. Finally he took a couple of paces back and went away.
The next days he went back to Maria to apologize, but she wasn?t in. A neighbour told him that she had gone to her parents in Rudov.
After that he had little time to think of her, because at work they were going to install the tape-recorders. It was very exiting because every noice they made could be heard by the Russians. But they succeeded; everything worked!
One evening he stepped out of the elevator and found Maria waiting for him by his door. He was very amazed and didn?t know what to say. Then he started to talk and apologize. Suddenly he wanted to kiss her and moved towards her. She screamed and Leonard?s neighbour Blake opened his door. Leonard and Blake never could get along very well, so Blake suspected him of having tried to rape Maria. But Maria defended him and they went in. They made it up and had a wonderful summer together.
There was one disadvantage in their relationship; Maria?s ex-husband Otto bothered her all the time. He asked her for money and sometimes hit her. After the time that Otto had hit Maria very hard, they decided that Maria shouldn?t stay alone in her appartment any longer. So when Leonard went home for Christmas and Maria didn?t want to join him he was very worried. He decided that he loved her so much that he wanted to marry her. She wanted to marry him too. After the engagement party they held in Leonard?s apartment they went to the Resi and after that to Maria?s apartment. When they were laying in bed they heard a sound from the wardrobe. It was Otto who was competely drunk and had wanted to spy on them. First they didn?t know what to do and talked until Otto woke up. Than they told him to get out, but he didn?t. He made Maria very angry and she wanted to attack him, but he hit her in the face. Than Leonard became very angry and he fought with Otto. Suddenly Maria couldn?t stand it anymore and she took an iron foot. It crashed down on Otto?s head and Otto fell to the floor. He was dead.
They didn?t know what to do with Otto and talked about it all night.
They decided to cut him into pieces and then get rid of him. It was a horrifying thing to do for Leonard but he knew that he had to do it. He had no other choice.
After they had cut him into pieces they put him into two cases Leonard had taken from his work. He was going to take Otto away and Maria would clean the whole place up.
Leonard didn?t really know what to do with the cases and walked around in the city almost the whole day. That evening he took them home and was thinking what to do next. He hadn?t had any contact with Maria anymore. Next morning he went out and wanted to find a lonely spot to leave the cases there. But when he came out Glass just got out of his car and asked him what he had done with the cases. Leonard told him that there was some equipment in them. Glass became very angry and told him that they would immediately take them back to the warehouse. But when they arrived at the warehouse the cases had to be checked. Just in time Leonard could make something up so that they weren?t opened. Leonard took care that they could only be opened by himself.
After that he went to the cafe Prag and did something stupid. He sold his knowledge of the tunnel to someone. The same day the Russians discovered the secret of the tunnel. But it happened very early; it couldn?t come from the information Leonard had enveloped.
Leonard went to Maria?s apartment and when he arrived he saw that Glass was there to ask Maria questions about what she had been doing the last two weeks.
After Glass had left Leonard told Maria that he was recalled to England and Maria would join him in a month. A few days later Maria took Leonard to the airport and said goodbye.
QUOTATION: ? The propellers were spinning to a blur. The ground crew was hurrying away. As the plane edged forwards, Leonard took one last look. They were standing close together. Perhaps she could not really see his face, because she raised one hand as if to wave and let it fall. And then he could see her no longer.
POSTSCRIPT: About thirty years later Leonard back to Berlin after he had received a letter from Maria. It said that it had been coincidence that Glass and she met at the airport. They married a year later, because she hadn?t heard anything from Leonard anymore. She also told him that she had three daughters and that Bob Glass had died two years ago. She hoped that Leonard would let her know if he was still alive.
He did and when he was in Berlin at what had used to be the warehouse he decided that he would make it up to Maria and visit her.
OPINION: In the beginning the book was pretty hard to follow and I didn?t really know what exactly was the function of the tunnel. After having read for a while it became clear. It was rather dull till page 173, but than it became really exiting.
QUOTATION: ? He knelt down beside one of the cases and took out a linoleum-cutting knife, a saw and an axe and set them to one side. Then leaving the blanket and the last in place, and with Leonard at the head, Maria at the feet, they lifted Otto towards the table?.
The story was easy to read because there were not very many difficult words in it and the sentences were not to long.
You could imagine well the lives of the main persons, but there are some decisions that I don?t understand, like cutting Otto into pieces and the following decision from Leonard; QUOTATION: ? Then he said ?Henry I think you came looking for something. You wanted to buy something, is that right? No, Leonard said, I want to give something to the right person. So, then what do you have? What I have is of interest to the Soviet Military.
That is good Henry. Leonard produced his map. ?On the East side of the Schonefelder Chaussee, just north of this cemetary here in Altglienicke, their telephone lines are being tapped?.?
Ian McEwan bracht als zoon van een militair officier een groot deel van zijn jeugd door in Oost-Azië, Duitsland en Noord-Afrika. Zijn opleiding genoot Ian McEwan op het prestigieuze Eton College en de Universiteit van Sussex en de Universiteit van East Anglia. Hij is tweemaal getrouwd, de laatste maal met Annalena McAfee, het hoofd van de literatuur recensies van de Britse krant The Guardian. In 2002 ontdekte Ian McEwan dat hij een broer heeft die afgestaan is ter adoptie tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog - dit werd bekend gemaakt in 2007. Zijn broer is metselaar met de naam David Sharpe. Hij is zes jaar ouder dan Ian McEwan, en geboren toen hun moeder getrouwd was met een andere man. David Sharpe heeft dezelfde twee ouders, maar werd geboren uit een affaire tussen de ouders voor hun huwelijk. Nadat haar eerste echtgenoot was gesneuveld in de oorlog hertrouwde McEwan's moeder met haar minnaar, en Ian werd enkele jaren later geboren.Ian McEwan debuteerde in 1975 met de bundel korte verhalen First Love, Last Rites. Hiermee werd hij in één klap beroemd en won hij een jaar later de literaire prijs de Somerset Maugham Award. In Nederland werd het boek uitgebracht onder de titel De laatste dag van de zomer. Daarna volgde zijn debuutroman The Cement Garden (1978) en in 1981 volgde de roman The Comfort of Strangers. Door de enigszins bizarre aard van deze verhalen kreeg hij destijds de bijnaam "Ian Macabre". In 1987 schreef hij met The Child in Time een minder duistere roman, hiermee zou hij doorgaan in zijn latere werk.
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- The Innocent
- Ian McEwan
- Engels
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