Saturday, Ian McEwan
Saturday - Ian McEwan, Jonathan Cape, Hardcover - January 24, 2005, ISBN:0224072994
| Title & Author: | Saturday Ian McEwan |
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"The only consolation for McEwan's contemporaries, I suppose, is that they could taunt him that he can't seem to write short stories any more." - Mark Lawson
Ian McEwan's novels include the Booker Prize-winning Amsterdam (1998), and the best-selling Atonement 2002), which (if anything) received even higher critical praise. Saturday continues this line of successful novels with a tightly focused, high-performance, stream-of-consciousness drama which reminds me of Enduring Love, the novel that lifted him into the literary stratosphere.
Saturday is a day in the life of London neurosurgeon, Henry Perowne. Happiness researchers will tell you that Saturday is the day of the week on which most people are the happiest, and this is reflected in the character of Henry Perowne. Ian McEwan has anticipated the request by Adam Phillips (Going Sane) to create saner heroes. Our crazy age tends to equate sanity with boredom. In this skewed universe being mad, bad, and difficult are equated with being interesting and "artistic". Ian McEwan rejects this nihilistic stance by presenting a sane hero who is also interesting.
Perowne performs neurosurgery while listening to classical music, and loves his family. But this Saturday upsets his idyllic life. London is engulfed by a protest march against the Iraq war, and he gets into a confrontation with a brain-diseased thug called Baxter. Oliver Sacks in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat talks about the pleasure and insight to be gained from "street neurophysiology". Perowne uses his neurophysiologic skill to practical effect in escaping from Baxter, at least until a later, more devastating, encounter...
Perowne's ruminations on brain dysfunctions, evolution, Iraq, and the clash between "big ideas" and "small pleasures" make for an intellectual roller coaster ride through a sophisticated consciousness. At the same time a suspense thriller unfolds. How will Baxter gain his revenge?
- Saturday: Ian McEwan is both a thriller and an intellectual romp through big ideas.