The Comfort of Strangers

Haunting and compelling

The Times

McEwan, that master of the taciturn macabre, so organises his narrative that, without insisting anything, every turn and glimpse is another tightening of the noose

Observer

As always, McEwan manages his own idiom with remarkable grace and inventiveness; his characters are at home in their dreams and so is he

Guardian

Has you in its stranglehold from the first page to the last. McEwan has honed his prose style (always admirably spare) to tell his tale, and with all the skill of an accomplished torturer, he throws the occasional crumbs of comfort, as the tension becomes unbearable, only to snatch them away within moments

Listener

The Maestro

New Statesman