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Saturday by Ian McEwan
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Saturday

by Ian McEwan

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4,976113321 (3.74)20
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English (105)  German (2)  Norwegian (2)  French (2)  Dutch (1)  Swedish (1)  All languages (113)
Showing 1-5 of 105 (next | show all)
I liked Ian McEwan's Saturday partly because of its focus on the mind-body relation. The main character, Dr. Perowne, is a materialist -- there's nothing more to a mind than a brain.

Perowne regards three persons through this reductionist lens:

1. Perowne's alcoholic father-in-law, a complicated poet whose foibles grow predictably from the effects of alcohol on the brain;

2. Perowne's mother, who suffers from dementia; the sections about her are the most profound in the book, focusing on the pathos and tragic affront when a good and caring person is deleted by brute, neural wiring malfunctions; and

3. Baxter, the intelligent thug; the issue here is the conflict between, on the one hand, our natural moral indignation at the heinous crimes of a free person and, on the other hand, the picture of the criminal as an unfree victim of his own gnarled neural wiring. (Shades here of philosopher Wifrid Sellars' contrast between the Manifest Image [our common, everyday sense of ourselves and others as free and responsible persons:] and the Scientific Image [in which those persons dissolve into amoral atom-swarms:].)

The main weakness of the novel is its plot, which seems implausible and jury-rigged in places, as if McEwan had notebooks full of good passages and riffs that he was itching to publish and just threw together any old narrative in which to embed them. Still, there's some great writing in Saturday. ( )
praymont | Jun 28, 2009 |  
I'm going through a phase when I rate a good plot over fancy writing, and I really couldn't get into this. I used to like McEwan; I remember enjoying The Cement Garden, but maybe my tastes have changed. If you enjoy details, analysis, medical procedure (the main character is a neurosurgeon; some of the stuff about his operations had me feeling queasy) and stream-of-conscious narrative then try it, otherwise think again. ( )
zbrntt | Jun 3, 2009 |  
This was nearly McEwan at his best, but in the end I just didn't believe what the main character had done. Shame; otherwise it was a brilliant piece of work by a fabulous author. ( )
Canadrian | May 31, 2009 |  
The beginning of ‘Saturday’ was an exercise in sounding out medical vernacular, causing me to envision a prodigal episode of Sesame Street, whilst with the help of my Oxford, piecing together sentences with grave patience. This incidentally helped little with my inability to comprehend the complicated neurological procedures being described, but it did make for a quickened response time in my dictionary drilling skills.

Although the beginning was toilsome, I soon found myself captivated and carried away by McEwan’s infectious prose. His adept understanding of people and the inner-workings of casual - or painstaking - everyday happenings, and further to that, the feelings and thoughts associated with such occurrences, is like no other I’ve experienced. There were times in the novel when I felt myself blush at the brutally honest confessions that his protagonist was making to himself about his responses to some of life’s challenging situations, things that I might not even be inclined to admit to myself, let alone publish for the world’s perusal.

Through this one day in the life of Henry Perowne, a neurosurgeon in his late forties, we observe him teetering on the brink of midlife crisis, as he reflects on the anomaly that he imagines himself to be. We are privy to his onslaught of contradictory convictions relating to his car, his choice of careers, and to a quickly emerging and terrorizing international conflict with the Middle East. Through his ruminations, personal relationship with an Iraqi, and heated discussions with his daughter regarding the implications of an imposing war with Iraq, juxtaposed by the anti-war rally that is taking place on the neighbouring streets of London on this very day, we are met with a rhetorically balanced assessment of the issues surrounding this historical tragedy.

Steadily relevant to the last decade, reoccurring themes relating to violence, terror and invasion, would have made this novel hot topic for the water cooler, when it made its debut back in 2005. During these keen observations of ‘Saturday,’ February 15th, 2003, McEwan, has led us on a journey that dares us to awaken ourselves to our consciousness, to be honest with ourselves, and to question our ability to take action, feel compassion and forgive.

This was my first encounter with McEwan, but now that I’m aware of his extraordinary command of the written word and his expert insight, I look forward to poring over everything he has to offer. I think my next selection shall be Atonement.

Check out more of my reviews at BookSnakeReviews ( )
PeachyTO | Apr 11, 2009 | 1 vote
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Epigraph
For instance? Well, for instance, what it means to be a man. In a city. In a century. In transition. In a mass. Transformed by science. Under organised power. Subject to tremendous controls. Ina condition caused by mechanization. After the late failure of radical hopes. In a society that was no community and devalued the person. Owing to the multiplied power of numbers which made the self negligible. Which spent military billions against foreign enemies but would not pay for order at home. Which permitted savagery and barbarism in its own great cities. At the same time, the pressure of human millions who discovered what concerted efforts and thoughts can do. As megatons of water shape organisms on the ocean floor. As tides polish stones. As winds hollow cliffs. The beautiful supermachinery opening a new life innumerable mankind. Would you deny them the right to exist? Would you ask them to labor and go hungry while you yourself enjoyed old-fashioned Values? You-you yourself are a child of this mass and a brother to all the rest. Or else an ingrate, dilettante, idiot. There, Herzog, thought Herzog, since you ask for the instance, is the way it runs.
-- Herzog, Saul Bellow, 1964
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To Will and Greg McEwan
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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.
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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 Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:53 -0400)

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