My Purple Scented Novel: A Short Story (A Vintage Short)

by Ian McEwan

Ebook, 2018

Status

Available

Call number

823.92

Collection

stompf klassik

Publication

Vintage (2018), 19 pages

Description

My Purple Scented Novel follows the perfect crime of literary betrayal, scrupulously wrought yet unscrupulously executed. 'You will have heard of my friend the once celebrated novelist Jocelyn Tarbet, but I suspect his memory is beginning to fade...You'd never heard of me, the once obscure novelist Parker Sparrow, until my name was publicly connected with his. To a knowing few, our names remain rigidly attached, like the two ends of a seesaw. His rise coincided with, though did not cause, my decline... I don't deny there was wrongdoing. I stole a life, and I don't intend to give it back. You may treat these few pages as a confession.'

User reviews

LibraryThing member timswings

A great story about two literary careers and how deceit drips in. And what a great title, as if you can smell purple. I than think about flowery soap.

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LibraryThing member lostinalibrary

My Purple Scented Novel is a Vintage Short by Ian McEwan. I don't often read short stories because it is a rare author who can produce a satisfyingly complete story in a very small space. McEwan, of course, is that rare author. The novel is about a friendship between two aspiring writers, one of

whom achieves early success leading to jealously and eventually literary theft, betrayal, and a reversal of fortunes. As it says in the publisher’s blurb, this is ‘a jewel of a story’, a beautifully drawn portrait of the human capacity for creativity as well as ego, duplicity, and frailty.

Thanks to Netgalley and Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review

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LibraryThing member GirlWellRead

A special thank you to NetGalley and Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

McEwan pens a wonderful short story about the perfect literary crime to celebrate his 70th birthday!

Written as a confession from Parker Sparrow about his friendship and betrayal of

celebrated novelist, Jocelyn Tarbet, this short is riveting from the first word. He is so clever, McEwan actually makes you root for the narrator even though he has plagiarized his best friend. Gah! So brilliant.

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LibraryThing member datrappert

Short story about two authors whose career trajectories diverge. One becomes a popular TV-attractive star; one ends up a professor at a University in Northern Britain--until a unique opportunity presents itself. Clever, but I have a feeling fellow authors will appreciate this one even more than the

average reader.

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LibraryThing member TheIdleWoman

Parker Sparrow and Jocelyn Tarbet have been friends since the beginning. They've suffered the slings and arrows of fortune together as young writers, they've slummed it and shared girlfriends and dreamed of a greater future. But now, in middle age, it's clear that Jocelyn has pulled away from the

pack. His novels flow out of him with ease; he's on the verge of becoming a national treasure. Meanwhile, Parker and his family live up north, where he struggles to combine writing with a university teaching post. He's written novels too, of course. They just don't seem to pour out of him as Jocelyn's do. And he's yet to reach the level where any new book is automatically a bestseller. Not that Parker's envious. Not at all! He and Jocelyn have been friends forever, after all. But then, one day, chance presents Parker with an irresistible temptation. McEwan's short story, originally published in The New Yorker in 2016, was written to mark his own 70th birthday (and, indeed, he appears in a brief, unnamed cameo). It's a delicious tale of literary skulduggery and resentment, centred on a strangely likeable antihero.

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LibraryThing member Eyejaybee

I was intrigued to find this small book stacked on the counter of Waterstone’s in Knutsford, Cheshire, last week. It had been published to mark Ian McEwan’s seventieth birthday which made me stop and think – surely it wasn’t so long ago that he was being fêted, along with Julian Barnes and

Graham Swift, among the up and coming young novelists to watch. Further sobering thought then made me also recall that friends and I had pored over his then newly-published ‘The Cement Garden’ while we were still at school, probably now some forty years ago.

This story shows he has lost none of his invention in the intervening decades. It is always entertaining to read writers writing about writing. In this story, the narrator, a published author himself, looks back to his university friendship with a writer who went on to enjoy considerably greater success and become part of the literary establishment. There is a scattering of references to some real members of that literary establishment, including a throwaway mention of ‘another novelist, the one (memory fails me) with the Scottish name and the English attitude’.

Marvellously crafted and beautifully written, this story was an absolute delight – a joyful birthday present from a writer to his readers. Happy birthday, Mr McEwan

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LibraryThing member Fliss88

This is the shortest book I've ever read and hard to believe someone could tell such a good tale in just 34 pages! Ian McEwan has done it brilliantly and I'm sure it was a bit of fun, written to celebrate his 70th birthday and published to mark the occasion. We have two men who are best friends and

both authors, one becomes jealous, succumbs to deception and theft, yet when all is said and done and the tables have turned, they're still remain friends.

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LibraryThing member Opinionated

At 34 pages widely paged, large font, pages, this is barely even a short story. But its guaranteed to liven up your morning commute. Parker Sparrow is our narrator, and not a particularly reliable one at that. His friend and frequent companion Jocelyn Tarbet effortlessly achieves the litarary

success that eludes him as he grinds out novels that achieve mild critical success, but few sales. Eventually he is forced to except that his temporary teaching jobs are actually his career. Not that he is jealous of Tarbet, of course not. Not that he resents his wife's frequent pregnancies, a snide little "she enjoys being pregnant" aside, no no.

But a week at Tarbet's house gives him the chance to turn the tables that he gleefully accepts.

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LibraryThing member bluepiano

When I finished this story my first thought was 'So what?' My second was 'What on earth was the point of writing this?' The plot is potentially interesting--though it stretches credulity to snapping point--but for all that's made of it McEwan might as well have been recounting his latest visit to a

supermarket. The narration is flat, the characters are stock ones (Golden Boy, Envious Friend), the details are mundane and sometimes mere stereotypes. I wasn't by any means means hoping for drama but I did expect find something of interest, something taking the story out of the thuddingly ordinary: What if, e.g., Golden Boy hadn't been so unaccountably thick as to fail to notice that his completed novel had been plagiarised by a person left alone for a week in his house? and then rather than easily refuting the claim that he'd been the plagiarist decided to keep quiet anyway? What if McEwan had taken the time to make his characters seem something more than names on a page? What if he'd troubled to create a shred of atmosphere, of mood? What if he'd spent more than 20 minutes writing the damned thing?

Apparently McEwan wrote this to mark his 70th birthday. Yes, well, I hope that I don't celebrate my 70th in a similar way, as the equivalent would be receiving the gift of a tin-opener in a carrier bag.

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LibraryThing member AngelaJMaher

A short story that will keep you entertained for half an hour.

LibraryThing member Islandmum84

A short beautiful story from a master storyteller.

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