Saturday - Ian McEwan

I am reviewing ‘Saturday’ by Ian McEwan.My copy I borrowed from my Dad, but I had a little look on the net, and copies were available for £13.99. Mr McEwan has written several novels before, including The Cement Garden, The Comfort of Strangers and Enduring Love. This is the first one of his that I have come across, so I cannot compare Saturday to any of his others. The copy I have is hard back, and shows the same picture as the one above. The Story. ------------- Henry Perowne is a successful neurosurgeon in London. He lives with his wife Rosalind, a newspaper lawyer, and his son Theo, a guitarist in a blues band. The story is about a ...  Read the complete review

***Please note this review had been posted before in the genral McEwan category, now removed from there and reposted in it's correct place*** Henry Perowne is firmly on the side of reason: a neurosurgeon by profession, an evolutionist by philosophy, coming clearly from the science side of the great divide; perhaps more than even a physicist would as medicine today is a technology of the body and rarely allows for the quasi-mystical awe that modern physics or cosmology might inspire. He`s not without his artistic side but that is definitely secondary, fully realised only in his children: a poet and a musician, vaguely representative of the apollonian and ...  Read the complete review

Ian McEwan’s tenth novel describes one Saturday – February 15th, 2003, to be precise - in the life of Henry Perowne –forty-eight years old, consultant neurosurgeon, loving husband and father. Henry’s thoughts and actions over the course of this day , which include mundane activities – playing squash, visiting his mother, making a fish stew – as well as some more dramatic occurrences, are all rendered in loving detail by McEwan, setting down the textures of everyday life in a way which is both absorbing and believable. Although the novel takes place over just one day, we learn a great deal in the course of it about Henry, his family and his background. ...  Read the complete review

This is the first book I have read by Ian McEwan so I can not make an immediate comparison with his previous efforts. 'Saturday' is one of those novels in which the whole story takes place in a single day. It begins in the early hours of the morning with McEwan's main protagonist Henry Perowne staring out of his bedroom window and witnessing the descent of a plane with burning fuselage heading towards a London airport. Perowne ponders on the fate of passengers on the plane, their chances of survival, and how their lives may be changed or ended by this event. This sets up the leitmotif that runs throughout the story; the contingencies of everyday life and the random ...  Read the complete review

Saturday is a snap shot of a novel. It's a life, a family, a city, a country, a world - all wrapped up and neatly presented as the day in the life of one man. It deals with twenty four hours in the shoes of one man, when simple everyday events threaten to collapse the central structure of his life. Henry Perowne is a good man. A fine neurosurgeon, a good father and husband. His mind thrives on logic and explanations, and this leads him to analyse every part of the world around him. The book begins with a restless night, insomnia that drives him to the window, where he thinks he sees something horrific happening in the night sky. This is the London of today - ...  Read the complete review