Saturday - Softcover

McEwan, Ian

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1400076196 ISBN 13: 9781400076192

Publisher: Anchor Books, 2006

Synopsis

In his triumphant new novel, Ian McEwan, the bestselling author of Atonement, follows an ordinary man through a Saturday whose high promise gradually turns nightmarish. Henry Perowne-a neurosurgeon, urbane, privileged, deeply in love with his wife and grown-up children-plans to play a game of squash, visit his elderly mother, and cook dinner for his family. But after a minor traffic accident leads to an unsettling confrontation, Perowne must set aside his plans and summon a strength greater than he knew he had in order to preserve the life that is dear to him.

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. . . . Powerful. . . . McEwan has shown how we . . . live today." -The New York Times

"Finely wrought and shimmering with intelligence." -The New York Times Book Review

"McEwan is supremely gifted. . . . Saturday is a tightly wound tour de force." -The Washington Post Book World

"This extraordinary book is not a political novel. It is a novel about consciousness that illuminates the sources of politics." -The Nation

"Saturday is an exemplary novel, engrossing and sustained. It is undoubtedly McEwan's best." -The Spectator

"Read the last 100 pages at one sitting-the pace and the thrill allow it. . . . Exhilarating." -Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Virtuosic. . . . Brilliantly macabre and suspenseful. . . . [A] fine novel." -The Wall Street Journal

"McEwan is in the first tier of novelists writing in English today. . . . He has achieved a complete mastery of his craft." -The New York Observer

"This is McEwan at the height of his powers. . . . More audacious than Atonement." -The Baltimore Sun

"In Saturday, the marvelously gifted Ian McEwan turns a single day into nearly twenty-four hours emblematic of an entire era." -Chicago Tribune

"One of the most powerful pieces of post--9/11 fiction yet published." -The New York Times

"Complex, suspenseful. . . . This novel . . . reinforces Ian McEwan's status as the supreme novelist of his generation." -The Sunday Times (London)

"Engrossing. . . . A thoughtful, measured and mature look at our world today. . . . [McEwan's] skill at weaving together suspense, psychological depth and beautiful prose makes him among Britain's best." -The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"A major event. . . . Saturday proceeds serenely into very different territory where the most secure existence is ringed by sinister possibilities." -Time

"Thoroughly fascinating. . . . For sheer intelligence and skill, it's hard to beat Ian McEwan's Saturday." -The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Impeccable. . . . Beautifully crafted. . . . Fluid, richly textured. . . . Engrossing." -Entertainment Weekly

"Read this book. . . . On the level of the sentence, McEwan is smart, witty and insightful. . . . His writing astounds. . . . Saturday is almost too good to bear." -The Times-Picayune

"Utterly enthralling. . . . Stunningly orderly and harmonious." -The Seattle Times

"Magnificently imagined." -San Francisco Chronicle

"A brilliant work. . . . Astoundingly enjoyable." -O, The Oprah Magazine

"McEwan's special achievement . . . is not only to give his narrative . . . near-hallucinatory clarity and verisimilitude, but also to make you realize that the world of his novel is our world. It's a book of poignant insight into the temper of the times. . . . And it's something rare and precious: a wise book." -San Jose Mercury News

"Hypnotic. . . . Exquisitely detailed, rich and suspenseful, literate and surprisingly explosive." -The Miami Herald

"McEwan's sentences are perfect, and his novels are always powerful and intelligent." -People

"Sober yet scintillating. . . . Lucidly shows us that civilization and culture and the life of the mind, fragile as they seemingly are, nonetheless have a resilience that can outlast barbarism." -Christopher Hitchens, The Atlantic Monthly

"A magnificent new novel that captures both the comforts and the anxieties of the world we live in right now." -Vogue

"The distinctive achievement of McEwan's work has been to marry literary seriousness and ambition with a pace and momentum more commonly associated with genre fiction. He is the master clockmaker of novelists, piecing together cogs and wheels of his plots with unerring meticulousness." -The New York Times Book Review

"Marvelous. . . . A magical book. . . . McEwan shows again the quiet brilliance of his prose and his insights." -Detroit Free Press

"Captivating. . . . The prose is so precise and evocative the reader can 'see' the scenes unfolding. . . . [McEwan] is at the top of his game." -The Denver Post

About this edition

• Publisher: Anchor Books
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1400076196
• ISBN 13: 9781400076192
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304