Enduring Love

Enduring Love is a novel by the British writer Ian McEwan, published in 1997. Its plot concerns two strangers who become dangerously entangled after witnessing a fatal accident.

Joe Rose is a science writer with a settled life, a long relationship with his wife Clarissa and a habit of explaining the world in rational terms. On a windy spring day in the Chilterns, a ballooning accident kills a man who tried to help hold it down, and in the confusion afterwards Joe meets Jed Parry, a stranger who believes that something profound has passed between them. Nothing of the sort happened, and no amount of clear explanation will persuade Parry otherwise. His obsession grows into something that threatens Joe's marriage and his ability to think his way out of problems, and the novel follows a sensible man discovering the limits of the methods he trusts. McEwan anchors the story in the language of psychiatry and the law, so the reader has to judge for themselves how reliable any of the accounts are.

The book was adapted for film, and its reputation rests on the precision with which it describes an experience its narrator cannot control.