The Child In Time - Ian McEwan, 1987.

The tragic event that overshadows children’s author Stephen Lewis’ life throughout The Child In Time is that which occurred two years prior, the protagonist and his three year-old daughter were at a supermarket when she was snatched, never to be seen again. What follows is not only an account of his complex grief and a fractious relationship with his wife, but a study of the very concept of time and its limitations, set against the backdrop of a somewhat alternative contemporaneous society in a bleak Britain facing extreme weather, nuclear war and leadership by an unnamed Prime Minister akin to Thatcher.

From the beginning of the novel McEwan leads the reader to believe that his title refers to the missing child, the would-be five year-old Kate. Stephen sees in all other children aspects of her and imagines how she would appear knowing full well that is more than likely she is no longer alive. Therefore it raises the question of whether time is a fixed dimension in which Kate had existed, but no longer does, or is time transient, and possible to revisit?

However, one’s thoughts tend to shift to Stephen himself being The Child In Time after an unexplained, brief hallucination of his parents before his birth; he finds himself discussing the concept of time with physicist friend Thelma, while her politician husband and fellow friend to Stephen, Charles, finds himself having a nervous breakdown. This crisis being a depression into childhood; Stephen discovers his friend behaving like a pre-pubescent boy- a man searching desperately for a simple, juvenile existence, a desire to return to a time already passed, if you like.

Ian McEwan writes in captivating prose; his ability to define life-shattering events in an implicitly concise and accurate manner bear resemblance to the opening chapter of his 1997 novel, Enduring Love. The author’s evident scientific interest and knowledge is as involving here as it was to be with both Enduring Love’s study of de Clerambault’s syndrome, and Saturday’s (2005) complex descriptions of neuroscience.

As elegant as any of McEwan’s work, The Child In Time develops the theory that time is immaterial, yet also immemorial and perpetually immune to any human attempts at interference, influence, and perhaps even, comprehension.