“Up There with Black Holes and Darwin, Almost Bigger than Dinosaurs”: The Mind and McEwan's Enduring Love

Abstract Drawing upon recent ideas from the cognitive sciences, this paper is an interdisciplinary exploration of the representation of consciousness in McEwan's novel Enduring Love, focussing on overlapping manifestations of Theory of Mind ranging from altruism to violent pathology. Through techniques such as intertextuality, the use of paratexts, and the juxtaposition of scientific and literary discourses, McEwan constructs this novel as a Theory of Mind creating a demanding and appealing reading experience that mirrors the doubt and uncertainty of the characters as they strive to understand each others' minds. McEwan's deep interest in science and what it can and cannot tell us about human nature is a potent theme in Enduring Love. This article argues that Enduring Love exposes and exploits the unique potential of literary narrative to represent our intense desire to engage with other minds, both highlighting the fact that we are designed by nature to read and to misread minds, as well as the capacity of the novel to communicate the raw feel of human experience in a way that eludes scientific discourse.