One picnic on the list:Enduring LoveRead about the other picnics on the list.
by Ian McEwan
The setting is a beech wood in the Chilterns and the picnic ought to have been tasteful, middle-class and uneventful. The ingredients were bought at Carluccio’s in London, the centrepiece is “a great ball of mozzarella”. There are olives, mixed salad and focaccia. The wine is a 1987 Daumas Gassac – opened but never enjoyed because of what is to eclipse the picnic forever and launch the turbulent novel: a hot air balloon in trouble which has the narrator abandoning his picnic and running across the fields.
Enduring Love also appears on Douwe Draaisma's list of the five best novels about mental disorders and John Mullan's lists of ten of the best examples of unrequited love in literature and ten of the best balloon flights in fiction.
--Marshal Zeringue
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