|
Loading... Saturdayby Ian McEwan
LibraryThing recommendationsMember recommendationsLoading...
won't like
will probably not like
will probably like
will like
will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. There was point while I was reading "Saturday" when I wondered if a book that takes place over 24 hours should take 24 hours to read, because it began so excruciatingly slowly. Then the story took finally took hold, and I read the whole thing (in something less than 24 hours). (  ) paeonia | Jan 31, 2010 |  Goddamn you, Ian McEwan.This book made me uncomfortable. That's the best word I can come up with at the moment. The story is so thoughtfully told and never rushed that I didn't see what was coming until it hit me. How is one to go on after reading something like this? Just pretend it didn't and continue to talk to people like nothing has happened? Like that aching tightness in your chest isn't there? Like that slight lack of resolution isn't sitting in your gut like so much lead?When I started this book, it was apparent to me that I had read something very much like it before. I was almost right. After the incident with the car, I realized that it was similar to a movie I watched called Enduring Love (Can you guess who wrote the book it was based on?). A normal guy goes through his normal day until something unusual happens. But it's not the event that matters so much, it's the guy's reaction to the event. It's how life changes afterward. Atonement was the same way (another movie I watched). It's just McEwan's style, I suppose. He does it well.There wasn't a single bit of plot wasted. Every scene was integral to the work as a whole. Had the synchronicity not been mostly limited to themes, it might have been too much. By the end, I felt angry and manipulated. McEwan took some of my worst fears and laid them out on paper, and for that I hate him. Some folks consider this sort of manipulation by authors to be an abuse of power, but I see it as high art. (  ) anoceandrowning | Jan 21, 2010 | eher nichts : McEwan ist eigentlich ein Könner, siehe v.a. Der Zementgarten oder seine frühen Erzählungen, hier jedoch geht Einiges in die Hose. Am problematischsten ist aus meiner Sicht der Versuch, durch möglichst präzises medizinisches Vokabular (Hauptfigur ist ein Arzt) die Welt aus der Sicht eines Chirurgen zu beleuchten. Das klingt zwar alles gut recherchiert und detailreich, ist jedoch völlig überzogen bis an den Rand der Lächerlichkeit. Dieser überfrachteten Figur stellt McEwan die typisch schöngeistige Tochter gegenüber, sozusagen ein Seminar in Sachen Gegensatz von Kunst und Wirklichkeit. Etwas dürftig. Klingt auch stellenweise wie schlecht von Musil geklaut. Gelungen ist aber die Schilderung der Beobachtung eines Flugzeug - Unglücks, das die Hauptfigur irrtümlicherweise als Terroranschlag interpretiert. Hier kommt schön die allgegenwärtige Paranoia zum Vorschein. Das wäre richtig ausbaufähig gewesen. r1hard | Nov 22, 2009 | Herzog by Saul Bellow and Saturday in the Village by Giacomo Leopardi and The Dead (The Dubliners) by James Joyce. Perhaps McEwan has written better books… I promise than to read also the others and will know to say. The citation of Bellow beginning of the book is coherent with the same story: he is obvious the influence of the style of 'Herzog' , but who has already read this book will not find in Saturday the same coherence between character and narrative style. The better thing: the life that comes lead outside always is observed through a glass (window or television that is), like for reflect a distance desire. For this it is easy to associate the Saturday in the Village by Leopardi: at least for a day we forget the History. To observe and to reflect of the passed day near to a window: John Huston and The Dead by Joyce or simply the book of Joyce, the snow covers of white the landscape as the sleep of Perowne finally reaches in order to close the day: ' This Time there' ll be not trouble falling toward oblivion'. (  ) GrazianoRonca | Nov 15, 2009 | "Saturday", which I've recently listened to on audiobook, appears to have provoked some surprisingly vehement reactions. It is flawed, certainly. For one thing, I couldn't understand why McEwan chose to go for a third person narration. The focus on one individual's day seems to lend itself naturally to a first person narration, and I can't recall an occasion when McEwan discloses anything that Henry Perowne doesn't already know or before he becomes aware of it. The medical jargon which seems to have bothered other people would also have seemed much more natural if Henry had been relating his own story and the same goes for the focus on the squash game. Henry seems a serious man and this extends to his attitude to exercise and competition. However, McEwan uses his scenario to make subtle, thoughtful points well, and not just to explore the author's own apparent ambivalence over the events taking place on his chosen day. The scientifically minded Henry, one of the most convincing characters McEwan has ever created, is contrasted nicely with is artistically inclined children and father-in-law and also with his Alzheimer's stricken mother, as well as the more obvious showdown with Baxter. The ending is just a little bit too neat for my liking and lets the book down a bit too. All in all, mid-table McEwan. (  )1  Grammath | Nov 15, 2009 | 
 Overall, however, Saturday has the feel of a neoliberal polemic gone badly wrong; if Tony Blair—who makes a fleeting personal appearance in the book, oozing insincerity—were to appoint a committee to produce a "novel for our time," the result would surely be something like this.
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0385511809, Hardcover)From the pen of a master — the #1 bestselling, Booker Prize–winning author of Atonement — comes an astonishing novel that captures the fine balance of happiness and the unforeseen threats that can destroy it. A brilliant, thrilling page-turner that will keep readers on the edge of their seats.Saturday is a masterful novel set within a single day in February 2003. Henry Perowne is a contented man — a successful neurosurgeon, happily married to a newspaper lawyer, and enjoying good relations with his children. Henry wakes to the comfort of his large home in central London on this, his day off. He is as at ease here as he is in the operating room. Outside the hospital, the world is not so easy or predictable. There is an impending war against Iraq, and a general darkening and gathering pessimism since the New York and Washington attacks two years before. On this particular Saturday morning, Perowne’s day moves through the ordinary to the extraordinary. After an unusual sighting in the early morning sky, he makes his way to his regular 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 a small-time thug. To Perowne’s professional eye, something appears to be profoundly wrong with this young man, who in turn believes the surgeon has humiliated him — with savage consequences that will lead Henry Perowne to deploy all his skills to keep his family alive. (retrieved from Amazon Tue, 05 Jan 2010 14:58:47 -0500) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Wikipedia in English (1)
