Point of View

Ian McEwan employs several clever plot strategies to advance his story. The point of view is ostensibly through the eyes of Jeremy, both a main character and the narrator. Jeremy is writing a memoir about his fascinating in-laws, and the author uses this artifice to good effect, as Jeremy is able to reveal much of the story through his personal interviews and notes about the life of the Tremaines. McEwan is able to submerge us directly into the thoughts of June and Bernard Tremaine, not by switching to their point of view, but by having his narrator, Jeremy, plagued by their ghostly voices, which argue incessantly in his head just as the couple so often bickered in 'real life.'

The story is really a debate as to whose point of view - June's or Bernard's - is the correct one. Bernard is the rationalist, convinced...