First Love, Last Rites is a collection of short stories by Ian McEwan

Ian McEwan

Ian Russell McEwan CBE, FRSA, FRSL is a British novelist and screenwriter, and one of Britain's most highly regarded writers. In 2008, The Times named him among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945"....

. It was first published in 1975 by Jonathan Cape

Jonathan Cape

Jonathan Cape was a London-based publisher founded in 1919 as "Page & Co" by Herbert Jonathan Cape , formerly a manager at Duckworth who had worked his way up from a position of bookshop errand boy. Cape brought with him the rights to cheap editions of the popular author Elinor Glyn and sales of...

 and re-issued in 1997 by Vintage

Vintage

Vintage, in wine-making, is the process of picking grapes and creating the finished product . A vintage wine is one made from grapes that were all, or primarily, grown and harvested in a single specified year. In certain wines, it can denote quality, as in Port wine, where Port houses make and...

.

Context

The collection is McEwan's first published work and was regarded by the author (along with his second collection of short stories, In Between the Sheets

In Between the Sheets

In Between the Sheets is the second collection of short stories by British writer Ian McEwan.-Context:The collection is McEwan's second book and second collection of short stories, and was regarded by the author as an opportunity to experiment and find his voice as a writer...

) as an opportunity to experiment and find his voice as a writer. In an interview with Christopher Ricks

Christopher Ricks

Sir Christopher Bruce Ricks, FBA is a British literary critic and scholar. He is the William M. and Sara B. Warren Professor of the Humanities at Boston University and Co-Director of the Editorial Institute at Boston University, and was Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford from 2004...

 in 1979, McEwan commented, "They were a kind of laboratory for me. They allowed me to try out different things, to discover myself as a writer." As a piece of work that portrays McEwan, the writer, at his youngest, it is perhaps fitting that the dominant theme is that of adolescence, of the blurry and perilous divide between childhood and adulthood; in addition themes of sex, perversion, and the grotesque in its many forms feature throughout.

Stories

The book is composed of eight short stories, with the title story coming seventh:

• "Homemade"
• "Solid Geometry"
• "Last Day of Summer"
• "Cocker at the Theatre"
• "Butterflies"
• "Conversation with a Cupboard Man"
• "First Love, Last Rites"
• "Disguises"

Awards

First Love, Last Rites received the Somerset Maugham Award

Somerset Maugham Award

The Somerset Maugham Award is a British literary prize given each May by the Society of Authors. It is awarded to whom they judge to be the best writer or writers under the age of thirty-five of a book published in the past year. The prize was instituted in 1947 by William Somerset Maugham and thus...

 for 1976; coincidentally, McEwan's friend Martin Amis

Martin Amis

Martin Louis Amis is a British novelist, the author of many novels including Money and London Fields . He is currently Professor of Creative Writing at the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester, but will step down at the end of the 2010/11 academic year...

 had been the previous author to receive the honour.

Reception

McEwan's collection was well-received by critics. In the Dictionary of Literary Biography

Dictionary of Literary Biography

The Dictionary of Literary Biography is a specialist encyclopedia dedicated to literature. Published by Gale, the 375-volumes set covers a wide variety of literary topics, periods, and genres, with a focus on American and British literature....

, John Fletcher explained, "Such writing would be merely sensational if it were not, like Kafka's, pointed, so accurate, so incapable indeed of being appalled. In contemporary writing one has to turn to French literature to encounter a similar contrast between the elegance of the language and the disturbing quality of the material; in writing in English McEwan is wholly unique." Critic Robert Towers described McEwan's England in The New York Review of Books

The New York Review of Books

The New York Review of Books is a fortnightly magazine with articles on literature, culture and current affairs. Published in New York City, it takes as its point of departure that the discussion of important books is itself an indispensable literary activity...

as a "flat, rubble-strewn wasteland, populated by freaks and monsters, most of them articulate enough to tell their own stories with mesmerizing narrative power and an unfaltering instinct for the perfect, sickening detail"; Towers called the collection "possibly the most brilliantly perverse and sinister batch of short stories to come out of England since Angus Wilson's The Wrong Set."

Film adaptations

The title story was adapted for a 1997

1997 in film

-Events:* The original Star Wars trilogy's Special Editions are released.* Production begins on Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace.* Titanic becomes the first film to gross US$1,000,000,000 at the box office making it the highest grossing film in history until Avatar broke the record in 2010.*...

 film of the same name. The film stars Natasha Gregson Wagner

Natasha Gregson Wagner

Natasha Gregson Wagner is an American actress.Gregson Wagner was born in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of Richard Gregson, a film producer, and the late actress Natalie Wood...

 as Sissel and Giovanni Ribisi

Giovanni Ribisi

Giovanni Ribisi is an American actor. His film credits include Gone in 60 Seconds, Boiler Room, Saving Private Ryan, The Mod Squad, The Gift, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Lost in Translation and more recently, Public Enemies and Avatar...

 as Joey. It was directed by Jesse Peretz

Jesse Peretz

Jesse Peretz is an American bass guitar player, feature film director, and Grammy-Award winning music video director.-Life and career:...

.

"Butterflies" has been adapted twice for cinema. In 1988 by Wolfgang Becker

Wolfgang Becker

Wolfgang Becker is a German film director and writer. He is best known to the international audience for his work Good Bye Lenin! .-Biography:...

 under the German title Schmetterlinge and in 2005 by Max Jacoby

Max Jacoby

Max Jacoby is a Luxembourgian film director and screenwriter. He studied at the London Film School where he graduated in 2001 with his short film Babysitting. In 2003 he made a short film called The Lodge, with Eve Best in the lead role...

 under its original English title.

"Solid Geometry" was also adapted by Channel 4

Channel 4

Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...

 in 2002 into a short film of the same name

Solid Geometry (film)

Solid Geometry is a 2002 short TV film directed by Denis Lawson, starring Ewan McGregor and Ruth Millar. It is based on a short story by Ian McEwan published in collection First Love, Last Rites.-Plot summary:...

. This adaptation was directed by Denis Lawson

Denis Lawson

Denis Stamper Lawson is a Scottish actor and director. He is known for his roles as John Jarndyce in the BBC's adaptation of Bleak House and as Gordon Urquhart in the film Local Hero, but is best known for playing the part of Wedge Antilles in the original Star Wars trilogy.-Early life:Lawson was...

 and stars Ewan McGregor

Ewan McGregor

Ewan Gordon McGregor is a Scottish actor. He has had success in mainstream, indie, and art house films. McGregor is perhaps best known for his roles as heroin addict Mark Renton in the drama Trainspotting , young Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars prequel trilogy , and poet Christian in the...

 as Phil and Ruth Millar

Ruth Millar

Ruth Laura Millar is a Scottish actress.-Early years:She spent her early years in Glasgow before attending Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design where she graduated with a degree in fine art in 1996. After leaving art school Millar formed Wee Lassie Productions, a production company that...

as Maisie.