Black Dogs.

Black Dogs, by lan McEwan (Doubleday, 149 pp., $19.50)

THIS fascinating, complicated short novel is in the form of an Englishman's memoir of an incident in the life of his mother-in-law--an attack on her by two black dogs on a French road during her honeymoon at the end of World War II. At the time, Jenny is married to a Cambridge Stalinist, and both of them are apparently bound on a bleak career as upper-class Communists. But the attack jolts her so badly that her marriage degenerates into cold, cranky quarreling. Bernard, her husband, remains a Stalinist, while Jenny is converted to a sort of Continental mysticism. If this sounds like the makings of one of those novels with anti-Americanism and memories of dreary English childhoods as alternating themes, it is not. Ian McEwan does a remarkable job of humanizing his tale. He follows the marriage for forty years, from after the war to the collapse of the Wall in 1989, which finds Bernard walking the ruins of Berlin and making excuses for Communism and himself. McEwan never hesitates to present the stark dichotomies at the heart of his story, yet it is told in such a strange, subtle manner that has the ring of conviction. Like Anthony Powell, McEwan beats back the frontier of British intellectual folly, always an accomplishment.