Saturday | Ian McEwan | Good Reading, But It Lacks Focus For The First 100 Pages.

Saturday | Ian McEwan | a good story set in london

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Saturday

	Saturday Ian McEwan Nan A. Talese, 2005 - 289 pages average customer review:based on 295 reviews view larger image
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Good Reading, But It Lacks Focus For The First 100 Pages.

Saturday is the ninth novel by the British author Ian McEwan (1948 - ), a well known author of ten novels. He is genrally considered to be a very successful writer: six of his novels have become screenplays and most of his novels have been top sellers. The present novel is "literary fiction." That is, the plot and the story are less important than the writing, the prose, and the types of characters used by the author along with their emotions.

It is a work of fiction, and like most fiction, there is a degree of unbelievability to the story. He tries to cram too much into one day in the life of a 48 year old London neurosurgeon called Henry Perowne - but too much is better than too little if you want to keep a reader's interest. Without revealing the plot, we follow him for a full day from early in the morning on a Saturday to early Sunday morning.

The idea is to follow an interesting person for one day, and to tell about the person's experiences and emotions, while bringing in the complications of living in a post 9-11 world. The one day setting is in London on a Saturday in the time period between September 11, 2001, and the invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003.

The story and the drama involves the reunion of his family and two guests: he has a younger wife, a son, a daughter, both around 20, plus a father-in-law, a poet. Throughout the story there are direct and indirect references to types of diseases, genetics, classical music, jazz, rock music, literature, and poetry. One wonders if McEwan is showing off his broad knowledge of popular culture and science. The lack of a clear story for much of the first part of the book plus all the cultural refernces will turn some readers off.

Perowne's daughter, Daisy, quotes part of a poem, Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold, in chapter 4. The full poem is reproduced by McEwan at the end of the book. Also, he has a good quote from Bellow's Herzog at the start of the book.

This is not what I had expected. The books is very diffuse but it is not a slow read nor is it dull. The characters do have realistic and sympathetic emotions and overall it is a good piece of literary fiction. Readers will have to read all of the novel, start to finish, to understand what Ian McEwan is trying to accomplish. But, it is worth 5 stars.

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a good story set in london

I found "Saturday" by Ian McEwan to be a pleasing read by a very impressive author. McEwan is a wordsmith of the highest quality. The protagonist Henry is a neurosurgeon, which I found fascinating as the backdrop. There is a lot of dialogue over Henry's family, his work, the war in Iraq, music, you name it. McEwan easily made it all interesting for this reader.
I'd warn readers to avoid reading the dust jacket info. It has a spoiler I'm glad I wasn't aware of when the plot shook things around later in the book

Attention-Deficit Disorder Writing

McEwan here has written what I call an "Attention-Deficit Disorder" book: one of those books where every sentence prompts a long digression into something -- a memory, an internal monologue, whatever. It takes page after page just to get the protagonist out of bed on a Saturday morning, fer cryin' out loud. As a result, the plot moves along so glacially that you start wanting to scream: "Get to the point!" And eventually, you just stop reading, like I did somewhere around page 150. This is not to say that McEwan can't string together words. In fact, he's a master. His insights and his passion for detail -- exotic detail, in fact -- are superb. I dunno. Maybe I'm not very perceptive, or I may be impatient or maybe I just don't get it. This book is just a little too "thoughtful" and slow-moving for my money.

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