The Innocent

By: Ian McEwan

Narrated by: John Franklyn-Robbins

Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins

Publisher's summary

War-weary Berlin has much to offer Leonard Markham, a young, naive postal engineer: first the arts of sophisticated intrigue, then the delights of sexual pleasure. But Leonard's new knowledge carries a heavy price, dragging him and the listener into a new type of story that is exhaustively suspenseful and utterly irresistible.

Listen to an interview with Ian McEwan on Charlie Rose.

©1990 Ian McEwan (P)2003 Recorded Books, LLC

Critic reviews

"McEwan's name will be on everyone's lips with his startling new novel, an impeccably constructed psychological thriller set in Berlin during the Cold War....McEwan's neat, tensile prose raises this book to the highest level of the genre." (Publishers Weekly)
"A tour de force of horror and philosophical suspense." (The New York Times)
"So exhaustively suspenseful....It should be devoured at one sitting." (Newsweek)
"McEwan...a breathtaking master...has written a blueprint for the future of the genre." (Time)

A feel good Cold War story

A feel good Cold War story. It mainly takes place in the mid 1950s. Out outs a love story, a spy story and to a degree a murder story. It mixed German, American, and British cultures. The young couple, particularly the young man are well portrayed. Perhaps there is some betrayal here. Mainly the story OSS one of trying to recover from one war while enduring a Cold War.

A Lifelike Knot of Possibilities

At first I thought this was going to be "The Spy Who Fell Into the Cold War." The setting was right; the characters were available, but then, like life, it veered into an unexpected alley. So I thought it was going to be about romance and trust and danger. But the danger wasn't from the embattled governments or other outside influences in the divided city or the divided society; the danger was from inside the relationship, from inside the individuals. Then, like life, the story veered again, coping with danger, and danger was like a voracious beast intent on devouring the trust and the romance. Only the ending of the novel doesn't ring true for me, the looking back, the untying, the rekindling; these are the postscripts to a Hollywood movie, the way we'd like things to be, under control and logical, but not very lifelike.

Found my self gas being out loud

I love this author, and the innocent has so many twists and turns, I found myself gasping out loud, laughing out loud, shaking my head incredulously! Excellent read!

Great story

What a great story from pre-wall Berlin. Not the typical spy story, but as an industrial espionage, so much more believable. Will look for other works from McEwan.

TOO GORY

I would have given this book a 10 star, the performance and the story are fantastic. I love Ian McEwan's writing and was working my way through every one of his books. No more! The extended, graphic, gory chopping up of a dead body was over the top. I had to fast forward through it and then I didn't have the stomach to finish the book

More love story than espionage thriller

We liked this a lot — great narration, the usual great characters, story and dialogue we’ve come to expect from Ian McEwan — but we were slightly misled by its categorization in the Audible catalogue as a spy thriller. Still really recommend (with one trigger warning about an extremely long and explicit description of a gory act of violence… we kinda fast-forwarded through it).

Terrible narrator

This book has an interesting story but the narrator has a stilted style that is distracting while listening.

Excellent!

Such a riveting story! I loved the narrator's distinct enunciation despite his accent so I had no trouble clearly hearing and understanding each word. He also added a bit of mystery via his style of speaking.

Been There, Done That

This romance novel for men is unoriginal and lacking suspense. Perhaps it's a testament to our jaded times that the graphic sex is tedious, the espionage lacks suspense, and the gruesome murder fails to shock or surprise. The unrealistic, tidy ending is a joke. The author seems to want to be Graham Greene but ends up being Barbara Cartland. I like the narrator, which is why I stuck with it until the end.

McEwan does it again

A character that we are invested in is flawed. Yet we still want the very best for him. So, when a point comes where we want to call out “stop it, you idiot,” it can be hard to continue. Yet it is all so worth it when we reach the end of the story. These flawed characters seem to be trademark of McEwan, but each one is special in their own way.