Ian McEwan’s 1990 novel, The Innocent, is a flawed but absorbing transition between McEwan’s earlier works and his later novels. The book is set in post-war, pre-wall Berlin, where 25-year-old Leonard Marnham is a British post office technician assigned to a secret spy mission (based on an actual Anglo-American joint spy effort). He falls in love with Maria Eckdorf, a German divorcee, five years older than him. When things go wrong, they go horribly, sickeningly wrong. Yet McEwan deftly shows how each step down the slippery slope was justifiable and even necessary for the two lovers.

Full review posted on Rose City Reader.