The Comfort of Strangers
An English couple seven years into an unmarried holiday routine keep getting lost in the alleys of an unnamed Italian city, too tired and too polite to admit how little they now want from each other. A stranger with a photograph in his pocket intercepts them after midnight, feeds them, and introduces his wife in an apartment furnished entirely from his dead father's house. The chilled formality of it marked McEwan's move from shock effects toward architecture.
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Attributes
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
Plot structure
Symbol / motif
Culture / tradition
Closest analogues
- 56% · 12 shared
- 48% · 13 shared
- 48% · 12 shared
- 48% · 11 shared
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- 47% · 10 shared