Reading Order
Enduring Love Reading Order
Enduring Love (1997) by Ian McEwan opens with a balloon accident in an English field — a child in an escaped hot-air balloon, five strangers who run to help, and a man who falls to his death holding the rope. Joe Rose, a science journalist, cannot stop thinking about one of the other men who ran to help: Jed Parry, who believes that God brought them together and has since begun stalking Joe. The novel is a study of obsession from the outside — of what it is like to be the object of a delusional love — and of the difficulty of persuading others (including Joe's partner Clarissa) that the threat is real. McEwan includes in an appendix a clinical paper on the psychiatric syndrome he invented for Jed, presented as real.
Where to start
Enduring Love (1997)
Complete Enduring Love Book List
Enduring Love — Frequently Asked Questions
Is Enduring Love based on a true psychiatric case?
The stalker's syndrome McEwan gives Jed — de Clérambault's syndrome, an erotomania in which the sufferer believes a stranger is in love with them — is a real diagnosis. McEwan invented the appendix (a fake clinical paper by two psychiatrists) and it was apparently mistaken for a real paper by some early reviewers.
What is de Clérambault's syndrome?
De Clérambault's syndrome is a rare form of erotomania in which the sufferer believes that another person — usually of higher social status — is secretly in love with them and communicating this love through coded signs. In Enduring Love, Jed Parry believes Joe Rose is in love with him and that God has arranged their meeting; the more Joe tries to reject him, the more Jed interprets this rejection as coded affirmation.
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