The Child in Time

By: Ian McEwan

Narrated by: Simon Prebble

Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins

Publisher's summary

New York Times best-selling author Ian McEwan is a Booker and Whitbread Prize winner. In this powerful tour de force, two parents come to appreciate the forces of love and time after the disappearance of their daughter, Kate.

©1987 Ian McEwan (P)2004 Recorded Books, LLC.

Excellent Author!

Intense and profound. Requires your full attention, so no multi tasking here! The story evolves through multiple layers and can elicit many emotions, including profound heartbreak and loss. Fine narration!

Ian McEwan doesn't disappoint.

Narrator was excellent. McEwan writes beautifully. For me, his books are more about the journey: each sentence is so well crafted, and the plot is a bonus.

A sustaining pleasure

Where does A Child in Time rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

So far, at the top -- right up there with the later McEwans.

Have you listened to any of Simon Prebble’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

Prebble is a steady, reliable, articulate reader. He's able to give each character subtle shadings that pull the narrative forward without intruding or overacting.

Any additional comments?

Both Sweet Tooth and Child in Time take place, for the most part in a London and at a time that's familiar to me. A personal bias -- a kind of hungry homesickness for time and place and old friends -- makes the choice of five stars inevitable!

But well beyond that is admiration for McEwan's ability to write a complex story of love and loss with great intelligence and humor.

Nothing but words

So many words, yet no story. The author had three major places to redeem himself, but failed.

G rim with several grim twists

What pain like tho loss of a child!? But the characters are too twisted to maintain a. Opinion about.

Not McEwan's Best Effort

I am a big Ian McEwan fan. I have read all of his published novels, and many of his short stories. This novel I have picked up many times but always would lose interest after about 25 pages. I decided to buy the audiobook, thinking that it might make it easier to "get over the hump." It did, but still, even the audiobook was a bit of a chore. This book hits some of the familiar Ian McEwan themes, such as the nature of chance and how a life can turn on a dime, but it went on to more general and murky discussions about the nature of time itself, and these lengthy discourses never seemed to advance a real story. It seemed a bit pretentious. I am not saying the book did not have some high points. McEwan is so skilled a writer, I am sure his grocery list would be a decent read, but, to me, this is the least satisfying of all his novels.

Ian McEwan's worst.

Pretentious and disappointing. Would have been better as a couple of short stories without the tedious padding. McEwan is capable of far superior material.