SOURCE: Brookner, Anita. “Desire and Pursuit.” Spectator 279, no. 8822 (30 August 1997): 28-9.

In the following review, Brookner praises Enduring Love for its effective use of “psychological terrorism,” McEwan's patient building of conflict and suspense, and the book's ultimate portrait of disintegration.

De Clérambault's syndrome, named after the French psychiatrist who first isolated and identified it in 1942, describes that state of would-be possession which is now tamely known as stalking. De Clérambault's most famous patient was in love with King George V, and was convinced that the curtains of the upper windows of Buckingham Palace delivered messages of regard, concern, or warning which only she could perceive. There are a lot of single-issue fanatics out there, lonely lobbyists for some hopeless personal cause who perceive persecution as legitimate in the crazed circumstances which they have devised and who conceive of love as a form of assault. Some of them...