The Innocent by Ian McEwan (Vintage)
by Patrick O'Connor
THE main protagonist in this story certainly starts off as an innocent but that can't last in 1950s Berlin.
It is the beginning of the Cold War and a joint CIA/MI6 operation builds a tunnel from the American sector to the Russian sector (an event which really happened). Leonard Marnham, is a 25 year old Englishman seconded from the Post Office to help tap the phone lines of the Russians.
Markham meets and falls in love with Maria, a 30 year divorced German, hardened by the experiences of living in a Berlin battered and bruised by the end of the Second World War.
Markham, a virgin, has little life experience and is not at all streetwise but Maria takes him under her wing and slowly he begins to enjoy his time amongst the Berliners.
Working underground on the phone lines and mixing with shady characters from the world of espionage, Markham finds that he has a fresh purpose in life and bit by bit, these two parallel existences, strip away his innocence.
And then Maria's ex-husband, a drunken former German soldier, returns to the scene and beats her up. McEwan is a master story-teller and the plot builds up nicely to a gruesomely violent finale, packed to the rafters with tension.