Sunday at Vesuvio

“Have you read anything else by McEwan?” Her speech was slurred and full of alcohol-laced syrup. She perched unsteadily on her bar stool.

“I read ‘Saturday’,” I admitted.

Her one steady eye gazed across the dust jacket of the book on the bar in front of me, for the tenth time that night. I was reading McEwan’s latest novel, “On Chesil Beach”, a compelling tale of, from what I’ve read so far, sexual mores in 1962. The dipsomaniacal blonde on my left had clearly been trying to use the book as an entry point to a dialogue for hours but only now, after two shots of Jack Daniels, did she summon the courage.

“McEwan sucks!” she declared. “I hated ‘Saturday’. I got through it but I hated it. What’s that other book? A — A– A –”

“‘Atonement’?” I offered.

“That’s it!” she said with a finger crooked before her swaying line of vision. “Fucking ‘Atonement’.”

“Lousy ending. Totally telegraphed third act.”

At that moment a tall young man appeared over my shoulder.

“What’re you guys talking about?”

“This is my brother,” she explained. “He’s into opera and low brow culture.”

I answered his question. “We were talking about Ian McEwan but about books specifically.”

“Oh?” He arched his eyebrows. “Have you ever read Jackie Collins?”