The Comfort of Strangers was published by Jonathan Cape in October 1981 and is McEwan’s second novel — a taut, menacing thriller set in an unnamed city that is transparently Venice. Mary and Colin, an English couple whose relationship is stagnating, encounter Robert, a charismatic, disturbing local man who invites them to his palazzo. Robert and his wife Caroline are locked in a sadomasochistic relationship that gradually draws Mary and Colin into its orbit. The novel builds toward an act of violence that the reader senses from the first page but cannot prevent.
McEwan’s Venice is a labyrinth of narrow streets, dead ends, and tourist traps — a physical correlative for the psychological trap the couple is walking into. The prose is deliberate and precise, each detail weighted with implication.
The Novel
Robert is the novel’s most disturbing creation. He tells stories about his upbringing — a tyrannical father, an adored mother, a childhood of violence and sexual confusion — that explain his pathology without excusing it. His palazzo is decorated with photographs of Colin, taken covertly over several days. Caroline, his wife, is both his victim and his accomplice — she bears the physical scars of his sadism but has absorbed his worldview. Their relationship is a closed system of pain and dependency that requires fresh subjects to sustain itself.
Mary and Colin are passive throughout — tourists in every sense, drifting through Venice without purpose, allowing Robert to steer their movements. McEwan’s point is that passivity is itself a form of consent: by failing to resist, by accepting hospitality, by entering the palazzo, Mary and Colin become complicit in their own destruction. The novel’s final act of violence is both shocking and inevitable.
The unnamed city — canals, bridges, tourist hotels, crumbling palazzi — is Venice in every particular. McEwan uses the city’s physical structure as a metaphor for entrapment: the narrow calli (alleys) lead to dead ends, the layout is designed to disorient, and the beauty of the architecture conceals the claustrophobia of the space. The novel draws on a long tradition of literary Venice — Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, Daphne du Maurier’s Don’t Look Now, Henry James’s The Aspern Papers — in which the city functions as a beautiful trap where desire leads to destruction.
The Politics of Gender
The Comfort of Strangers was published in 1981, at a moment when feminist literary criticism was becoming a major force. The novel’s treatment of sexual violence — Robert’s sadomasochism, Caroline’s complicity, Mary’s passivity — attracted feminist readings. Some critics argued that McEwan was reproducing the dynamics of patriarchal violence without adequately critiquing them; others saw the novel as a precise anatomy of how power and sexuality intertwine. Harold Pinter, who wrote the screenplay for the 1990 film adaptation (directed by Paul Schrader, starring Christopher Walken and Natasha Richardson), understood the novel as being primarily about “the structure of power.”
Critical Reception
The novel was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1981, losing to Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. Reviews were respectful — the prose quality was undeniable — but some critics found the novel’s violence gratuitous and its psychology too schematic. The Pinter/Schrader film adaptation divided audiences: those who admired it found it faithful to the novel’s atmosphere of dread; those who disliked it found it pretentious.
Collecting The Comfort of Strangers
First edition (1981, Jonathan Cape, London): Boards with dust jacket.
Approximate market values:
- Fine/Fine in dust jacket: $400–$1,000
- Signed first edition: $600–$1,500
- Without jacket: $50–$100
Value trajectory (2016–2026): Approximately 2× appreciation. The novel benefits from its Booker shortlisting, its Pinter connection, and its status as early McEwan.
Projected values (2026–2036): Strong continued appreciation. As McEwan’s second novel and a Booker-shortlisted title, it will always attract collector interest. Signed Cape firsts should reach $2,000–$4,000.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the city Venice? Yes, in everything but name. McEwan has confirmed that Venice is the setting, though he chose not to name it — the anonymity adds to the atmosphere of disorientation and allows the city to function more effectively as metaphor.
What is Robert’s motive? Sexual obsession and the need to dominate. Robert’s fixation on Colin — specifically on Colin’s physical beauty — drives the plot. The novel draws on the psychology of serial predators: the grooming, the isolation of victims, the escalation from observation to contact to violence.
Is this a horror novel? It belongs to the literary thriller tradition rather than genre horror, but its effects are genuinely horrific. The slow build of dread, the inevitability of the violence, and the complicity of the victims produce an experience closer to horror than to the conventional literary novel.