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{{infoboxinfobox1
|title=Amsterdam
|author=Ian McEwan
|buy=No
|borrow=Maybe
|pages=192
|publisher=Vintage
|date=August 2009
|isbn=0099535130
|amazonukcover=<amazonuk>0099535130</amazonuk>|amazonusaznuk=<amazonus>0099272776</amazonus>0099535130|aznus=0099535130
}}
''They wandered into an arrangement of oval rose beds, marked by a sign, 'The Garden Of Remembrance'. Each plant had been savagely cut back to within a few inches of the frozen ground... The patch of lawn was strewn with flattened cigarette butts, for this was a place where people came to stand about and wait for the funeral party ahead of theirs to clear the building.''
As I said - typically McEwan; it's not a pleasant description is it? But I'm sure you can imagine it, it's so close to the bone. The funeral is that of Molly Lane. She's the reason Clive and Vernon are hanging about in that euphemistically -named ''garden''. Molly was a socialite, a columnist, a lover of life and the erstwhile lover of both men. She may be dead but in this book hers is the character with all the verve and enthusiasm. She's also the posthumous instigator of events; everything that happens in Amsterdam hinges on the relationship Molly had with its four main characters. She died nastily and sadly, poor Molly, victim of a horrible dementia. Shortly after the funeral Clive and Vernon decide that should either of them ever face a similar situation the other would not allow such an awful decline. They make a pact, a pact of mercy killing, of euthanasia. Are you beginning to guess yet? Hence the title you see - euthanasia is legal in Amsterdam.
You should know the other people in the book. There is George Lane, Molly's widower - staid, sensible, pompous, priggish and hated by Clive and Vernon. There is Julian Garmony, the 'bring back the birch, hang 'em, shoot 'em, flog 'em' Foreign Secretary with ambitions for the premiership. But really, most of all, there is Molly, always there in spirit - vivacious, outrageous, but always loving and without her it seems that everything simply starts to fall apart. Both Clive and Vernon are high achievers; they are successful, established, esteemed, wealthy but all is not rosy for either of them. Clive is composing the Millennial Symphony, the work of music that will commemorate the coming thousand-year anniversary. He must find inspiration for his deadline approaches. Vernon is proprietor of an old, broadsheet newspaper with a declining circulation. He must save it and soon, but how?
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