The child is in his time

Stephen, a children's book author, faces the incident of his daughter Kate being kidnapped, in a quick moment during their shopping together at the grocery store. It happened during the weekend, when his wife was resting and sleeping, so he now does not know what to say to her, and how to justify the disappearance of their only child. The novel explores the fate of the relationship between the spouses, and how Stephen begins to recover images of his childhood and its unresolved complexes when his marriage enters a dark area of abandonment, where each of them decides to wrestle with grief alone. Ian McEwan takes us again, with his usual style known from "The Child Law," "Chesil Beach," and "The Shell," into the dilemmas of childhood and maturity, and the fluidity of time that does not recognize that a person passes through distinct and clearly defined stages in life.