Saturday
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Amazon.co.uk Review
The critical response to Saturday must be making Ian McEwan a very happy man (not that his virtually unassailable position as Britain’s leading novelist has been in doubt). While contemporaries (and rivals) Martin Amis and Will Self have had much more hit-or-miss records recently, each new McEwan novel gleans a host of plaudits, and Atonement has been generally hailed as his masterpiece. Saturday may not enjoy quite such acclaim, but it’s a remarkably accomplished piece of work, as richly drawn and characterised as anything he has written.
McEwan's protagonist is neurosurgeon Henry Perowne, a man comfortably ensconced in an enviable upper middle class existence. His wife is a successful newspaper lawyer, his daughter Daisy a budding poet. But as he wakes one Saturday morning and witnesses a plane accident through his window, he is not yet aware that this is a harbinger of a sustained assault on all that he holds dear. It’s a McEwan trademark to begin his novels with a striking or violent rupture of everyday existence, but this opening is a prelude to his most impressively sustained narrative yet. It’s the publication day of Henry’s daughter's poetry collection, but a chance encounter with a drunken trio emerging from a lap-dancing club ends violently, even as a march against the war in Iraq streams past nearby. And this encounter with the menacing Baxter, main antagonist of the group, is to have fateful consequences. As Saturday progresses, Henry is forced to examine every aspect of his life and beliefs, not least his attitude to the war.
Unlike many of his peers, McEwan is not content to reduce the issues of the war to simple opposition, in which Tony Blair is characterised as a war criminal. Henry has treated a victim of Saddam's brutality, and although a comic encounter with the Prime Minister himself is a highlight of the book, both Henry (and his creator) are obliged to consider the complex skein of the conflict from all sides. While there are missteps (the poetic daughter, Daisy, is thinly drawn), McEwan's invigorating and trenchant novel is an unmissable experience. --Barry Forshaw
The Guardian
'Pretty Fabulous'
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A brussels sprout of a book,
By muddy-funster (Kent, England) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Saturday (Paperback)
It was surprising to find so many 1- and 2-star reviews here at Amazon. "Saturday" has a lot going for it. Much has been made of the technical impressiveness of McEwan's prose; his meticulous research into multiple topics; the attention to detail in the stream-of-conciousness narration of the central character, whose constantly calculating approach to life seemed entirely fitting for a brain surgeon (sorry, "neurosurgeon").
I found the meditations on the state of society and current affairs of 2003 particularly satisfying. One of the best sections was the argument between Daisy and Henry about the rationale for the Iraq war, youthful moral absolutism on the one hand and sloppy pragmatic consequentialism on the other. (My own position on this issue has oscillated between the two over the last six years.) There were some gripping moments (I won't spoil things by going into detail) and, perhaps, some clever allegorical points being made - invasive brain surgery being contrasted with invasive military action, for example. And I'm pretty sure that learning how Henry thinks has, in a small way, changed how I think, for the better. On the other hand, it was equally surprising to find serious critics absolutely bowled over by this novel; words like "dazzling" and "stunning" seem to crop up a lot in reviews. They all seem to ignore the novel's most obvious flaw: a family of uniformly high achievers will not only be not particularly likeable, but, when the achievements are *this* impressive, almost certain not to exist. Yes, there's probably an 18-year-old kid somewhere who is currently being feted by the British Blues scene as our next greatest guitarist - but you can be sure that his sister isn't our next greatest poet, his dad one of our greatest surgeons, his mum one of our greatest media lawyers, his grandfather one of our greatest current poets and his poor grandmother "only" a "county champion" swimmer. How could McEwan go to such lengths with the details only to get the big picture so absurdly wrong? Some characters who actually act like human beings in a real family (occasionally stopping achieving things to make each other laugh, or drive each other up the wall, perhaps) would give the reader something to relate to. (One wonders if the reviewers would have been so gushing if they had been unaware of the identity of the author.) There's lots more to be said but you probably have better things to do with your time. So in summary: It's a brussels sprout of a book. You feel you ought to consume it, because you know it's good for you and you see everyone else doing it; and while you might not enjoy it much at the time, you'll feel slightly better for it afterwards.
35 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
The view from Ivory Towers,
By
This review is from: Saturday (Paperback)
Why is Ian McEwan so successful? Is it because his rich understanding of literature and science create a vital lens on our times? Or is it because the literate classes can so easily identify with his firmly middle-class viewpoint (see every main character for the last ten years). Like Atonement, the main character (Perowne, a neurologist) has that mixture of vague musing about how the less fortunate live and barely disguised fear of Baxter, a maladjusted type, this time 'with Simian features'. Honestly, how much closer can you get to dehumanising the less fortunate? Obviously this elevates Perowne to the paragon of man, flexing his mind and his muscles in a squash game while Baxter spends his time lounging in Spearmint Rhino. This is every male, middle-class professional 's fantasy version of himself, with all base urges assigned to the 'lower class' character. Like Atonement, Saturday includes scenes of hard-to-swallow heroism from Perowne and his arty children (yeah right) when by that point I was on Baxter's side, hoping he'd set fire to their Oriental rug or something. Of course, McEwan chooses to bring him close to raping the daughter instead, just to underline that he's no better than an animal. But instead he reads the daughter's poetry, gets all emotional about it and doesn't do any damage. This must be one of the most laughable moments in the history of literature, and epitomises this writer's problem. Instead of keeping one foot in the plausible, McEwan uses the dramatic climax to champion the transforming power of literature. But since its effect is attributed to Baxter's neurological and emotional condition, McEwan is just subtly and smugly stating that the 'lower classes' are otherwise morons and no better than animals. There is no awareness of Baxter's cultural alienation from poetry, or his lack of opportunity to indulge in it like the Oxbridge daughter. The reduction of Baxter in this way is compounded by the fact that he's no more than a sounding-board for the Perowne character to muse on neurological conditions. I'll admit this leads to some finely researched writing, but does 10 obscure scientific terms per page add up to literature? Or is it just pandering those middle-class readers again, who are just too busy these days to read novels (unless it can be categorised under 'mental self-improvement' activities).
When are we going to see a writer emerge who can really speak for the millions of Londoners who don't live in Highgate and Notting Hill? In the meantime, this book's only good for a laugh at the myopic ivory tower types.
40 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant, improbable, uncool,
By Christopher Twain "Chris" (London) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Saturday (Paperback)
Let's be clear: Ian McEwan is incapable of writing a bad English sentence. In `Saturday', as always, he gets under the skin of his characters with forensic brilliance and I can think of no other contemporary novelist who renders the texture of thought and consciousness with such nimble guile. There are ideas here that strike you with their elegant truth. So much for form. As far as story goes, `Saturday' scores low. When McEwan writes about the solipsistic artistry of Henry's neuro-surgery or the sentimental tug his over-achieving offspring induce, his tone is frankly embarrassing. In fact, everything about the Perownes' lives is uncool, from the son's young-fogeyish talent for the blues to his daughter's straight-from-the-pages-of-the-Sunday-Times poetry career. `Saturday' further showcases the two chinks in McEwan's formidable armour: dialogue (one has to translate it to believe it) and sex (too much coy information). The final invasion of the family home is wholly improbable and where else, apart from in the pages of a middle-class fantasy, could a rabid thug be disarmed by the lyric beauty of a Matthew Arnold poem?! I don't know how `Saturday' came into being but it feels like an amalgam of obsessions that had been knocking around the writer's head. Peace demonstrations, the moral complexities of the Iraq war, poetry, jazz and neuro-surgery read more like the contents of a Sunday supplement than the stuff of real life. Still, we have to judge McEwan relatively - he's probably one of the top three British authors writing today. Hopefully he will set his own bar higher next time.
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