Saturday (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "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..." (more)
Key Phrases: Jay Strauss, Henry Perowne, New York (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

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)
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From Bookmarks Magazine

As McEwan writers, “When anything can happen, everything matters.” Saturday magnifies a pivotal moment in history and a day in a man’s life as secure foundations crack and uncertainty rushes in. While critics cited different overriding themes, Saturday explores ideas of fate and purpose, life’s fragility, revelation, and terror at all levels of society. McEwan, an enduring talent in Britain combines “literary seriousness” with a “momentum more commonly associated with genre fiction.” The result is an intricate, captivating novel defined by a “serene tension” that erupts into a dark reality despite its hero’s optimism (New York Times Book Review).

McEwan brilliantly builds many layers of reality from small details. Henry-a sympathetic, if conflicted, character-knows he can examine people’s brains, but not understand their minds. His ruminations on surgery, lovemaking, music, war (he’s pro-war), and literature (he’s clueless) rise to a crescendo as he slowly questions his own motives and actions. In dazzling, authoritative prose, McEwan depicts this growing anxiety with a calmness that is soon violated.

Despite its appeal on both sides of the Atlantic, a few reviewers thought McEwan’s intricate plotting and slow, dark suspense was too structured. The novel’s explicit messages deprive the reader of “feeling, rather than coolly registering, the author’s intention” (New York Times Book Review). Yet, in the end, most critics agree that Saturday is both a substantial work of literature by one of Britain’s greatest minds and a powerful piece of post-9/11 fiction.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 289 pages
• Publisher: Nan A. Talese; Later Printing edition (March 22, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385511809
• ISBN-13: 978-0385511803
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (307 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #248,388 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

232 of 266 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A study of "the powerful currents...that alter fates.", March 22, 2005

By	Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

In the middle of the night, Henry Perowne, a 48-year-old neurosurgeon, awakens for no apparent reason and sees what he thinks, at first, is a meteor, but the object brightens, moves faster, and blazes through the skies at low altitude--a plane on fire, approaching Heathrow. In intensely realized descriptions, Henry thinks about this dramatic event and reacts and shares the most intimate aspects of his existence, drawing the reader into his life. Every action, thought, and question about life, fate, and destiny is articulated as Henry struggles to make sense of this one day in his life and see it in a philosophical context.

Happily married to Rosalind, a lawyer for a newspaper, Henry has two remarkably creative children--one a blues musician and the other a poet. Through their lives, he recognizes that his own preoccupation with science and reality has left him incomplete. He has come to believe that "there [is] more to life than merely saving lives," and he yearns to find a complete, "coherent world, everything fitting at last."

As the day progresses, Henry fixates on the plane accident, possible terrorism, the imminent war with Iraq, and a traffic accident resulting in an altercation with a thug. But throughout this "action," Henry is contemplating his relationships with the world at large, trying to understand his place within it. Having rejected organized religion, he finds some comfort in the conclusions of Darwin, who connects all life in a continuum in which he sees himself a part.

As he thinks of his own parents and children, he also observes contrasts in the world around him, people whose lives are different, not because of any inherent difference but simply because of chance--"the currents that alter fates." When the Perowne home is invaded during a family gathering at the end of the day, Henry faces a decisive moment in the battle between his emotions and his intellect. The climax is loaded with menace and executed with high drama, but the events themselves are less significant than Henry's reactions to them.

Intensely introspective and beautifully integrated, this is McEwan's most thoughtful--and least plot-based--novel to date, with every detail adding to the complex characterizations and themes--a wonderful meditation on individuals and culture, connection and disconnection, and the arbitrariness of fate. Mary Whipple

Atonement
On Chesil Beach
Enduring Love
Ian McEwan: The Essential Guide

122 of 143 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The challenge of the professional reductionist, March 22, 2005

By	Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This day in the life of a moral, conscientious man serves as a metaphor for the quality of a man's life, how unexpected violence may disrupt and injure, but not destroy. London neurosurgeon Henry Perowne sets out on his Saturday with a full schedule and a brimming mind, much of his internal musing triggered by the events of 9/11, the incipient war with Iraq and a massive anti-war demonstration taking place that day to protest Bush's potential attack on Iraq: "Saturday's he's accustomed to being thoughtlessly content..."

Perowne carries on an inner dialog made more complex by current events, though always engaged in thoughts of his patients and family, perhaps recently with a sharper edge, a poignancy, a nod to the random destruction that has become part of the new world landscape. A minor accident triggers a chain of events, so unexpected that Perowne is blindsided by his own lack of foresight. This one day becomes a metaphor for what has so recently stunned the world and left it shaken. Like a country attacked on a bright New York day, Perowne, and by extension his family, are briefly assaulted, then left to deal with the repercussions of violence.

The well-trained, educated brain screams danger, but the acculturated man is still in shock, unable to adapt to quickly changing circumstances: "Questions of misinterpretations are not often resolved." Facing imminent danger to himself and to his family, Perowne cannot make his precise mind plan, his mental calculations serving instead as stumbling blocks for extricating the family from a volatile situation.

I find it fascinating that the author's protagonist is a neurosurgeon, for McEwan writes with the precision of a surgeon, his novel as brilliantly structured as Perowne's mind. In a world gone mad with terror and the quest for a semblance of its former identity, Perowne creates an island of objectivity, the thinking, civilized man recreating a sane world, albeit one forever altered by circumstances. The real test is in the aftermath of such an event, how one moves on the key to the quality of life desired, whether left helpless and raging or refusing to concede those small fragments of integrity that must be repaired, though imperfect, forever scarred with a hairline crack. Luan Gaines/ 2005.

24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Saturday: compassionate critique of a flawed Superman., August 1, 2006

By	M. Locher (New Haven, CT United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I noticed a trend in a number of other reader reviews (mostly lukewarm or negative responses) which struck me as so off-base that it kicked off my own impulse to review "Saturday."

The suggestion is that McEwan's novel suffers from a protagonist who is too pristine, too blessed with a fine family, too lacking flaws to be believable or interesting. Shocking, considering I had just finished describing "Saturday" to my wife as a meticulous (albeit very gentle) critique of its protagonist, Henry Perwone, flawed hero du jour.

McEwan, no stranger to writing about the upper-middle class, sees Henry as a decent man; a good man, even. But it's awfully clear that McEwan's creation, though warm and intelligent, troubles the author. He reveals his concern with great subtlety. Yes, Henry is a highly accomplished medical professional, respected and at the top of his game. He's blessed with a passionate and loving marriage, and his grown children are extraordinarily good-natured, unique, and talented. Henry's family house is magnificent. So is his automobile.

It's with irony, then, that author McEwan weaves a compassionate portrait of Henry as an afflicted man. His case is minor, sure, but that's the beauty of "Saturday:" between the well-manicured lines of McEwan's novel is an quiet indictment of middle-class complacency, isolationism, passivity. Though his distaste for literature (in particular, non-realistic works) is completely forgivable, it's related, perhaps, to an overall smallness of vision. It's that smallness, we're meant to gather, which comes smashing back to bite him one Saturday.

McEwan has fashioned a protagonist who regularly rejects a worldview founded on connectivity--Henry prefers the scope of his private sphere too much to wonder for too long about the ripples any individual sends to others. He's oddly lacking in imagination. "Saturday" seems to suppose, aloud, whether Henry is exceptional, or, on the contrary, if he's the very picture of the succesful family man of the modern age.

Though that answer is ours to determine, Henry's all-too-typical collection of middle-class imperfections meshes with the titular day's events in a tide of slow-rising dread. Drawing a complex character study into the unfolding events of a single day is a tricky-sounding task, but McEwan pulls it off smartly. "Saturday" is observed with enough detail that the narrative slows from time to time (particularly in the first third), but stick with it; there's a great sense of humanity in McEwan's prose. These characters are well-portrayed, and when the narrative builds harrowing momentum, you'll cringe for them.