Saturday

Review by Booklist Review

McEwan's key strategy is to pit reason against chaos and art against arbitrariness as he orchestrates thorny moral dilemmas and menacing situations. This is the structure underlying his Booker Prize-winning Amsterdam 0 (1998), his best-selling Atonement 0 2002), and this tightly focused, high-performance, stream-of-consciousness drama about one day in the life of a sanguine London neurosurgeon. Henry Perowne is a good man. He loves to perform delicate operations while listening to classical music, and he adores his smart lawyer wife, adventurous poet daughter, and gentle musician son. For him this particular Saturday in February 2003 is a day full of promise, even though he's had a strange night and London is gearing up for an immense protest march against the impending war in Iraq, and even though he gets into a frightening altercation with a twitchy thug named Baxter, a confrontation he escapes by diagnosing his attacker's degenerative condition. It's been said that what makes literature so enthralling is its devotion to detail and its digressions. McEwan is a master of both, and consequently the reader reads this embroiling tale with two minds: one luxuriating in Henry's piquant ruminations on everything from the dysfunctions of the brain to evolution, Iraq, and society's retreat from "big ideas"; the other cued to suspense: how will Baxter exact his revenge? McEwan is as provocative, transporting, and brilliant as ever as he considers both our vulnerability and our strength, particularly our ability to create sanctuary in a violent world. --Donna Seaman Copyright 2005 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

In the predawn sky on a Saturday morning, London neurosurgeon Henry Perowne sees a plane with a wing afire streaking toward Heathrow. His first thought is terrorism-especially since this is the day of a public demonstration against the pending Iraq war. Eventually, danger to Perowne and his family will come from another source, but the plane, like the balloon in the first scene of Enduring Love, turns out to be a harbinger of a world forever changed. Meanwhile, the reader follows Perowne through his day, mainly via an interior monologue. His cerebral peregrination records, in turn, the meticulous details of brain surgery, a car accident followed by a confrontation with a hoodlum, a far-from-routine squash game, a visit to Perowne's mother in a nursing home and a family reunion. It is during the latter event, at the end of the day, that the ominous pall that has hovered over the narrative explodes into violence, and Perowne's sense that the world has become "a commuity of anxiety" plays out in suspense, delusion, heroism and reconciliation. The tension throughout the novel between science (Perowne's surgery) and art (his daughter is a poet; his son a musician) culminates in a synthesis of the two, and a grave, hopeful, meaningful, transcendent ending. If this novel is not as complex a work as McEwan's bestselling Atonement, it is nonetheless a wise and poignant portrait of the way we live now. (Mar. 22) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

Early one Saturday morning, neurosurgeon Henry Perowne watches a flaming aircraft descend over London-the fitting portent of a day when his life nearly goes up in smoke. Like the plane, Henry lands safely, but it's a tense (and brilliantly realized) ride. Henry's family is gathering to fete his eminent father-in-law, poet John Grammaticus, and he's looking forward to seeing daughter Daisy, fresh from Paris with a poetry book of her own. (Son Theo is a leading blues musician.) As he drives through a crowd protesting the imminent invasion of Iraq, Henry has a minor fender bender with an aggressive type named Baxter and makes the mistake of humiliating him by correctly noting that he suffers from Huntington's Disease. Naturally, Baxter seeks revenge, and when he and his cohorts invade Henry's house in a scene so painfully realized that it's almost unbearable to read, the family rises splendidly to the occasion. McEwan (Atonement) has done his job: the tension is palpable, the narrative tightly knit, and each character beautifully drawn-Henry's reflections on the value of music over literature and his muted stance in favor of invading Iraq make for thoughtfully contrary reading. Does McEwan give Henry a final act that some might find unbelievably noble? Maybe, but the author has earned it. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 12/04.]-Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

An increasingly mellowed but no less gripping McEwan (Atonement, 2002, etc.) portrays a single day in the life of a well-off upper-middle-class Londoner, blessed in every conceivable way. While crowds mass to protest the coming invasion of Iraq, Henry Perowne, a 48-year-old neurosurgeon at the top of his game, intelligent and self-aware, goes about a Saturday that's by turns mundane and marvelous. We follow his reflections on surgeries, so well detailed as to be med-porn; lazy lovemaking upon awakening, and restorative sex at the end of the day with smart, devoted, lawyer wife Rosalind (he notes his unusual luck in still wanting no one else); a sometimes savage squash game with friend and partner Jay; a sad visit to his senile mother; and shopping for dinner. A chance encounter with Baxter, an intelligent young thug, provides the small plot; Henry escapes a mugging when he recognizes early signs of Huntington's in the lad and takes control. That evening, at Henry's well-appointed townhouse, in the warm glow of gathered family--father-in-law John Grammaticus, towering poet turned to drink; son Theo, a gifted young blues guitarist; daughter Daisy, a poet visiting from Paris, newly published and newly pregnant--Baxter returns and holds Rosalind at knifepoint. Terrorized and terrified, the family, through their various strengths, overcome Baxter, who lands in the hospital requiring emergency surgery from the forgiving Henry. Comprised by an active awareness of his place in the world, of his love for family and work, and of the contingencies that make his life his own, and that make Baxter's life his own, Henry's thoughts--especially since they're informed also by a matter-of-fact understanding of the neurological processes that emerge as behavior and look like choice--envelop us in a total immersion experience. A sort of middle-class humanist manifesto: when you find yourself fortunate beyond all measure in a random universe, gratitude, generosity, and compassion are a decent response. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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One Some hours before dawn Henry Perowne, a neurosurgeon, wakes to find himself already in motion, pushing back the covers from a sitting position, and then rising to his feet. It's not clear to him when exactly he became conscious, nor does it seem relevant. He's never done such a thing before, but he isn't alarmed or even faintly surprised, for the movement is easy, and pleasurable in his limbs, and his back and legs feel unusually strong. He stands there, naked by the bed - he always sleeps naked - feeling his full height, aware of his wife's patient breathing and of the wintry bedroom air on his skin. That too is a pleasurable sensation. His bedside clock shows three forty. He has no idea what he's doing out of bed: he has no need to relieve himself, nor is he disturbed by a dream or some element of the day before, or even by the state of the world. It's as if, standing there in the darkness, he's materialised out of nothing, fully formed, unencumbered. He doesn't feel tired, despite the hour or his recent labours, nor is his conscience troubled by any recent case. In fact, he's alert and empty-headed and inexplicably elated. With no decision made, no motivation at all, he begins to move towards the nearest of the three bedroom windows and experiences such ease and lightness in his tread that he suspects at once he's dreaming or sleepwalking. If it is the case, he'll be disappointed. Dreams don't interest him; that this should be real is a richer possibility. And he's entirely himself, he is certain of it, and he knows that sleep is behind him: to know the difference between it and waking, to know the boundaries, is the essence of sanity. The bedroom is large and uncluttered. As he glides across it with almost comic facility, the prospect of the experience ending saddens him briefly, then the thought is gone. He is by the centre window, pulling back the tall folding wooden shutters with care so as not to wake Rosalind. In this he's selfish as well as solicitous. He doesn't wish to be asked what he's about - what answer could he give, and why relinquish this moment in the attempt? He opens the second shutter, letting it concertina into the casement, and quietly raises the sash window. It is many feet taller than him, but it slides easily upwards, hoisted by its concealed lead counterweight. His skin tightens as the February air pours in around him, but he isn't troubled by the cold. From the second floor he faces the night, the city in its icy white light, the skeletal trees in the square, and thirty feet below, the black arrowhead railings like a row of spears. There's a degree or two of frost and the air is clear. The streetlamp glare hasn't quite obliterated all the stars; above the Regency façade on the other side of the square hang remnants of constellations in the southern sky. That particular façade is a reconstruction, a pastiche - wartime Fitzrovia took some hits from the Luftwaffe - and right behind is the Post Office Tower, municipal and seedy by day, but at night, half-concealed and decently illuminated, a valiant memorial to more optimistic days. And now, what days are these? Baffled and fearful, he mostly thinks when he takes time from his weekly round to consider. But he doesn't feel that now. He leans forwards, pressing his weight onto his palms against the sill, exulting in the emptiness and clarity of the scene. His vision - always good - seems to have sharpened. He sees the paving stone mica glistening in the pedestrianised square, pigeon excrement hardened by distance and cold into something almost beautiful, like a scattering of snow. He likes the symmetry of black cast-iron posts and their even darker shadows, and the lattice of cobbled gutters. The overfull litter baskets suggest abundance rather than squalor; the vacant benches set around the circular gardens look benignly expectant of their daily traffic - cheerful lunchtime office crowds, the solemn, studious boys from the Indian hostel, lovers in quiet raptures or crisis, the crepuscular drug dealers, the ruined old lady with her wild, haunting calls. Go away! she'll shout for hours at a time, and squawk harshly, sounding like some marsh bird or zoo creature. Standing here, as immune to the cold as a marble statue, gazing towards Charlotte Street, towards a foreshortened jumble of façades, scaffolding and pitched roofs, Henry thinks the city is a success, a brilliant invention, a biological masterpiece - millions teeming around the accumulated and layered achievements of the centuries, as though around a coral reef, sleeping, working, entertaining themselves, harmonious for the most part, nearly everyone wanting it to work. And the Perownes' own corner, a triumph of congruent proportion; the perfect square laid out by Robert Adam enclosing a perfect circle of garden - an eighteenth-century dream bathed and embraced by modernity, by street light from above, and from below by fibre-optic cables, and cool fresh water coursing down pipes, and sewage borne away in an instant of forgetting. An habitual observer of his own moods, he wonders about this sustained, distorting euphoria. Perhaps down at the molecular level there's been a chemical accident while he slept - something like a spilled tray of drinks, prompting dopamine-like receptors to initiate a kindly cascade of intracellular events; or it's the prospect of a Saturday, or the paradoxical consequence of extreme tiredness. It's true, he finished the week in a state of unusual depletion. He came home to an empty house, and lay in the bath with a book, content to be talking to no one. It was his literate, too literate daughter Daisy who sent the biography of Darwin which in turn has something to do with a Conrad novel she wants him to read and which he has yet to start - seafaring, however morally fraught, doesn't much interest him. For some years now she's been addressing what she believes is his astounding ignorance, guiding his literary education, scolding him for poor taste and insensitivity. She has a point - straight from school to medical school to the slavish hours of a junior doctor, then the total absorption of neurosurgery training spliced with committed fatherhood - for fifteen years he barely touched a non-medical book at all. On the other hand, he thinks he's seen enough death, fear, courage and suffering to supply half a dozen literatures. Still, he submits to her reading lists - they're his means of remaining in touch as she grows away from her family into unknowable womanhood in a suburb of Paris; tonight she'll be home for the first time in six months - another cause for euphoria. From the Hardcover edition. Excerpted from Saturday by Ian McEwan All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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