Enduring Love: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

Enduring Love: A Novel

Ian McEwan

• 1999 IMPAC Dublin shortlist
• 1997 JT Black-Fiction shortlist
• 1997 Whitbread-Novel shortlist
• Score: 18.49

Science writer Joe Rose is spending a day in the country with his long-time lover, Clarissa, when he witnesses a tragic accident—a balloon with a boy trapped in it is being tossed by the wind, and, in an attempt to save the child, a man is killed. As though that isn’t disturbing enough, a man named Jed Parry, who has joined Rose in helping to bring the balloon to safety, believes that something has passed between him and Rose—something that sparks in Parry a deranged, obsessive kind of love.

Soon Parry is stalking Rose, who turns to science to try to understand the situation. Parry apparently suffers from a condition known to psychiatrists as de Clerambault Syndrome, in which the afflicted individual obsessively pursues the object of his desire until the frustrated love turns to hate and rage—transforming one of life’s most valued experiences into pathological horror. As Rose grows more paranoid and terrified, as his treasured relationship with Clarissa breaks under the tension of his fear, Rose realizes that he needs to find something beyond the cold reasoning of science if…

Enduring Love

Roger Michell

In Enduring Love, a Joe (Craig) and Claire’s (Morton) romantic picnic is disrupted after a hot air balloon drifts into a field, appearing to be in trouble. Inside the balloon is a young boy and the pilot whose leg gets tangles in the anchor rope. After three men, including Joe, rush to secure the basket and try to save the two passengers, it seems they cannot rescue the pilot, who eventually falls to his death and the young boy remains unscathed. When Joe and one of the other men, Jed, go to retrieve the body of the fallen man, Jed feels an instant connection with Joe—one that, as the weeks go by, becomes ever more intense.