The Story Archive

Enduring Love

Ian McEwan · 1997 CE · Novel · English · Contemporary

A picnic in the Chilterns is interrupted by a hot-air balloon dragging a boy across a field, and five strangers run in from different directions to grab the ropes. One of them, a science journalist who makes his living explaining things, exchanges a look afterwards with another of them, who takes it as the opening of a love affair conducted on God's instruction. His partner, a Keats scholar, watches the letters accumulate and cannot see what he says he sees.

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