Muito estranho mas excelente.

Seven short stories in this quick read, some feel unfinished or an interesting idea that could be expanded. Weirdos and creeps feature throughout. I thought the best was “Psychopolis”.

What did I just read

Some of my personal favourites from the collection are Reflections of a Kept Ape, and Dead as They Come. Reflections of a Kept Ape was, as the title suggests - about a pet ape, however, the interesting detail is that the story is told from the ape's perspective. He is reminiscing about his eight day sexual relationship with his owner. Although it is quite a strange concept, it works really well and isn't too explicit about it either.
On the other hand Dead as They Come is a very graphic novel but it is so strangely fascinating that it makes you want to continue reading...because you can't believe what you're reading! However, I believe that underneath the shocking nature of the story, perhaps Dead as They Come is more of a social comment of the trashyness of the rich - using their money to buy "plastic", perfect women, whom are clearly unable to hold down real relationships?? (My literary mind is still trying to come up with a full theory/analysis of the tale...the that is the jist of what I pulled from it).
I enjoyed other stories in the book too, but the two mentioned above were ones that seemed to have lodged themselves in my brain.
I would recommend this book but not to the prude of heart. It is rather shocking and explicit.

I wonder if I am not as let down as others who wrote such venomous reviews because I have never read McEwan before? people complained that this book made them feel uncomfortable, but I believe that was the goal of the author, to play with the readers emotions, to shock and repulse. I personally found the book a bit predictable and other than the first story didn't really enjoy it very much, but the subject matter nonetheless is taboo enough and described in such Hitchcockian detail that we are left no choice but to shift from foot to foot, hoping what is about to happen, isn't.

I don't always like what McEwan's talking about but i love his writing.
I read this after reading some more recent work and it really felt like he was trying to provoke more than anything. He certainly got better with time.

This one really should have been left in the laundry basket.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Ian McEwan. “Atonement” is one of my favorite books. But this… that it’s even by the same writer as that or other excellent books like “Amsterdam” is baffling.

I picked this up while visiting Dublin. There’s a fantastic used bookstore there, maybe the best I’ve ever been to, called “Chapters”. While spending my vacation browsing its shelves my eyes fell on this collection of short stories.

I was surprised that I’d never heard of this collection before – though no longer – and based on the title and the cover, which features a nude woman lying, appropriately enough, between the sheets, I added it to the already meter high stack I was lugging around.

This was supposed to be a sexy read and that alone made me bypass many of the other no doubt excellent books I brought back from that excellent bookstore to read this one first.

Let’s hope I have better luck with the rest.

Nothing about this is sexy at all. It’s a collection of mostly kinky stories that utterly fail to intrigue. I'm thinking of the father in the title story and his incestuous feelings for his young daughter and his regularly gross sexual feelings for her similarly young friend. But it wasn’t the content of the story that turned me off, but the execution.

Nothing here is especially well-written. It’s all very early McEwan and these feel like pages that should have stayed in the wastebasket.

Am I alone in feeling that way?

Disenchanted as I was at numerous occasions, I turned this book around to read, with some amazement, the gushing blurbs from the likes of the Los Angeles Times and other newspapers you’d recognize.

“Is all that praise about this book?” I wondered to myself. I find it more likely that such adulation came from reviews of McEwan’s greater body of work because here he was clearly having an off day.

Reading, then skimming, “In Between the Sheets” confirms that some things really are better left unexposed.