TIME STOOD STILL ON SATURDAY. (Saturday - Ian McEwan)

Member Name: loopymum65

Product:	Saturday - Ian McEwan
Date:	05/11/06 (189 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Well written and descriptive.

Disadvantages: Overwritten and boring.

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.
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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 day in the life of Henry, which starts in the early hours of Saturday, when for no apparent reason, Henry’s sleep is disturbed and he witnesses the descent of an aeroplane with an obvious mechanical problem.
Waking in the night is an unprecedented event for Henry, and due to this his Saturday is disrupted from there on.
While driving across London to his usual Saturday squash game, he is involved in a road accident while trying to avoid a peace march against the war in Iraq. (This does date the book somewhat, which is set on 15th February 2003.)-
Unfortunately for Henry, the people whom he inadvertently scrapes cars with, are not very nice chaps. In fact you could describe them as your typical London wide boys, with the exception of the chap in charge.
Whilst trying to talk himself out of a good kicking, Henry astutely notices the chap in charge is exhibiting signs of Huntington’s disease, a fact which he uses to try and talk his way out of things. This he accomplishes to a degree and makes a hasty departure.
On his way once more, he plays his game of squash, and then purchases dinner for that evening’s celebration dinner.
His daughter Daisy and her querulous grandfather are both visiting from France to celebrate the publishing of Daisy’s first book of poetry.
Daisy and her grandfather are not on speaking terms, and the evening promises to be something of a trial as her grandfather likes alcohol rather too much, and is a former poet himself, who is now struggling with his career.
After a shower and depositing his purchases, he visits his mother, who suffers from dementia at her residential home.
***Now I could go on with a synopsis for the book, but that would mean that I had given away the whole story, so I will stop now and give anyone who wishes to read this the chance to find out for themselves what happens at the end.
All I will say is that his evening does not go well, and it is not the fault of a sozzled poet. -----------

What I will say is that throughout the whole of the book, you are given an in-depth description of all of Henry’s thoughts and feelings with regard to the situations he finds himself in and the people he encounters.

My Opinion.
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I have scanned through several reviews of this book, and all of them are effusive in their praised for this book. However I am about to be controversial and completely disagree.
While I will be the first to concur that this work is well written and extremely descriptive, my personal opinion is that the work was overdone, and McEwan used 25 words when just 1 would have done the job just as well. I may be no literary critic, but I felt that every scene and dialogue was overwritten to such a degree that I lost all interest.
The whole of the 279 pages are used to describe just 24 hours, and whilst a fair amount happens in one day for Henry and his family, I found the majority of the book a bore.
While the work does give us a great deal of insight to Henry’s innermost thoughts, feelings, desires and philosophies, this did nothing to endear me to him whatsoever.
I found myself thinking that he was boring, pretentious, and egotistical, and that his veneer of altruism was so thin it should have been transparent.
Maybe it is just my working class roots poking through, (which I am not ashamed to admit to), but I feel he was portrayed as a stereotypically pompous upper class surgeon with a God complex.
The whole story revolved around Henry, and while some attempt was made to give the other characters some background and depth, I was as indifferent to their plight as much as I was to Henry’s.
Had more events of excitement happened, then I maybe would have found the work more engaging, but I found my thoughts drifting and I had to re-read several passages twice to keep myself from loosing the thread of the story.
Some of the work is dedicated to Henry’s thoughts and feelings in a post terrorist England, as well as his and others thoughts as regard to our invasion of Iraq. While this was an interesting contrast to the story itself, I thought that McEwan had tried to broach the subject in such an abstract way, that it did nothing to further his thoughts either one way or the other on the conflict.
If his intention was to provoke thought or discussion on the situation, then my opinion is that he should have dedicated his work to that sole topic, as opposed to trying to dress it as a story.
Henry, despite all the authors’ description, remained a one dimensional bore for me. Had the story been told from a different perspective from some of the other characters at times, then I think I would have found the whole thing more engaging.

I am aware that not everyone will share my opinion on this; you only have to look at other reviews on the site to see this. However this is my opinion, and while I wish to share it, I would not wish to impose it without inviting you all to read this for yourselves.
If your taste runs to reading all about feelings, without any actual meat to the story, then this would be perfect. However I found this tale neither Arthur nor Martha, and wish the author had stuck to one subject without all his diversions.

This is one book that I longed to put down, yet I kept reading in the hope that it would get better. I have very diverse reading interests, and I have only ever put down 2 books before in my life, but I do wish I had put this one down, or better still returned it unread.
Also posted on Ciao.
Sue xxx

Summary: Everyone likes this one but me.