Saturday

McEwan, Ian

ISBN 10: 0007207050 ISBN 13: 9780007207053

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2005

Synopsis

The stunning new novel from the Booker Prize winning novelist.

Saturday, February 15, 2003 – Henry Perowne wakes before dawn to find himself already in motion, drawn to the window of his bedroom. He is a contented man – a successful neurosurgeon, the devoted husband of Rosalind, and proud father of two grown-up children. What troubles Perowne as he stands at his window is the state of the world – the impending war against Iraq, and a general darkening and gathering pessimism since the attacks on New York and Washington eighteen months before.

Later during this particular Saturday morning, Perowne makes his way to his weekly squash game with his anaesthetist, trying to avoid the hundreds of thousands of marchers filling the streets of London, protesting against the war. A minor accident in his car brings him into a confrontation with Baxter, a fidgety, aggressive, young man, on the edge of violence. To Perowne's professional eye, there appears to be something profoundly wrong with him.

Towards the end of a day rich in incident Baxter appears at the Perowne home during a family reunion – with extraordinary consequences.

About this title

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

Review:

"Dazzling... Profound and urgent" (Observer)

"The supreme novelist of his generation" (Sunday Times)

"He remains at the top of his game - assured, accomplished and ambitious" (Daily Telegraph)

"A book of great maturity, beautifully alive to the fragility of happiness and all forms of violence... Everyone should read Saturday" (Financial Times)

"An exemplary novel... It is undoubtedly McEwan's best" (Mail on Sunday)

"A rich book, sensuous and thoughtful... McEwan has found in Saturday the right form to showcase his dazzling talents" (The Times)

"Richly laden. McEwan pulls out all the stops. A rich book, sensuous and thoughtful. McEwan has found in Saturday the right form to showcase his dazzling talents" (Sunday Telegraph)

"A book of great moral maturity, beautifully alive to the fragility of happiness and all forms of violence... Everyone should read Saturday... Artistically, morally and politically, he excels" (The Times)

"It's the good writing and the truthful and convincing way of rendering consciousness that makes Saturday so engrossing" (Colm Toibin)

"Saturday is wonderfully involving and affecting on every page. Everybody with any interest in contemporary literature will want to read it at once" (Evening Standard)

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0007207050
• ISBN 13: 9780007207053
• Binding: Audio CD
• Editor: Nicholl Kati