People are Strange

The book I would like to tell about is The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan, which I read two weeks ago, on a fine Monday. Unfortunately I cannot remember much now, but for one, I don't have any other thing to write about just now, secondly, it raised some intriguing questions.

About two or three weeks ago I attacked the foreign fiction section of Szabó Ervin Könyvtár in a random hunt for books to feed my appetite for Anglo-American literature. I fully used the eight books' capacity of my library card in order to avoid the need to go back soon, for I don't really have the opportunity now that I don't go to university, which is exactly one stop from the library. Anyway, the reason I brought home this book is that I was looking for the famous Atonement by the same author, but found this one instead and hoped it would be just as good. I have a tendency to conclude that books by the same author embody the same level of merit. In addition, the book cover implied a "haunting and compelling" novel, which label as I've now found out can be found on every second cover, and not always righteously.
I cannot recall if nationalities or place names were mentioned but my stereotypical knowledge makes me suppose that the protagonists, Mary and Colin were American, as they behaved so naively throughout the story. They are a couple on holiday; as to the whereabouts, I imagined it either Italy or Thailand, probably because these are the two places I last read about as holiday destinations. So, there they are, generally bored and out of the place, never finding their way in the city. There is some kind of detachment implied in their relationship, though they have sex on a regular basis.
As they are walking the streets of this mysterious town or city, of course they get lost again, and meet a peculiar guy by the name of Robert. After a strange night they accidentally meet him again the next day, and he takes them home, where they meet his mysterious wife, who walks with a limp, and actually whispers to Colin that she cannot leave the house and that they must return.

Perhaps I've already said too much, but I don't want to spoil the story. Throughout about the first part of the book I found it a bit boring I have to admit. Then the second part was a real "turn of the screw," although not as unpredictable for me as for Mary and Colin. Okay, I must spoil it to make my point. This book is like a collection of weird, perverted dreams, mostly about sex. For example, one of the protagonists had a vision of tying his or her partner to a kind of fucking machine and watch him or her being screwed to death, something like that. Then there is the other couple, Robert and his wife, whose name I cannot remember but was Canadian I think. They started out as a normal couple, then gradually they lost interest in each other, and the man actually started to hate the wife. Then, after a while he started to hurt him during the intercourse, which she turned out to enjoy. Of course they got more and more carried away, until they started to fantasizing of actually killing the wife during sex, which she described as a total cessation or demolition of the self. And this became their obsession. Weird, isn't it?
I remember I was really struck by this kind of sexuality, especially after the naive Mary and Colin got involved. To be pervert is one thing, but to force others to take part is something totally different. Not that I accept even one-to-one cruelty. And I became more puzzled as I was reading Toni Morrison's Love, in which I also found a woman character who wanted to be hurt. In that story; however, she had been raped at an early age, so probably that was her only possible way of sex. Still, I just cannot understand why and how a woman would actually want to be hurt. Is this a defect of are primarily male-dominated culture? Are women really so used to be humiliated and hurt that they actually want to get degraded and destroyed? Or are we to blame our socialization of ever wanting more and more intensely? Does "kind" sex lose its attraction as time goes by? I might not be open to art or this might be the exact effect that the book is meant to have on the reader, but I read the last few pages in horror and disgust and was afraid of having nightmares for days afterwards.

P.S. One more thing came to my mind reading the book; namely, that I used to write down some of my most peculiar dreams when I was a teen. And since I still keep on having curious ones, it might be useful to keep track of them again. For example, I remember that soon after reading the book I dreamt about a huge blue elastic bedsheet (and by huge I mean something like a classroom), which I was trying hard to put on the bed but failed as the whole room was flooded, and I struggled with the bedsheet even when it was being carried away by water. Argh, gives me the goose bumps...

P.P.S. I've found it as a film here.