This book was terrible. There was barely a plot, it was very wordy without actually saying anything, and I felt McEwan's portrayal of a teenage boy was incredibly off. (I've certainly never known any 18 year old boys wanting to kiss 60 year old women...) I continued reading only because I thought it might get better... it didn't. Don't waste your time on this one. ( )

A tough call. Many disagree with reducing the effect of a piece of literature to a simple star rating, but truth be told I do it more for myself and less for others. It's a way of keeping track and a shorthand for the books I enjoyed, or hated, or books that were just middling. A near five-star read for me, this book is written in a register which just works, or does so at least for me. The story of a British High Court judge — specializing in family law? (I can't be sure) — middle age and feeling it, forced to deal with a marriage in strife while she would rather put herself fully into her work, for which she seems to have considerable talent. Novels of manners, novels of the quiet intricacies of family life can go so wrong, so easily, that I'm caught off guard when someone gets it exactly right. Not that this is wholly either, but it is a novel of human intricacies, and this is what seems to trip up so many writers. McEwan seems to remember to make the stories interesting, that in fact the greatest writer of them all would poison, or stab, or rape, or to chase by bear if it came to that, and the greatest sin would be to bore, to have people sitting endless in salons chatting in mutual navel-gazing. My favorite novels are when the writer balances the equation, getting both sides right. Here is the story of these people and they are real, or seem so to us — and here is why this story is interesting absent all of that faffing about. I've read two or three or four other McEwan novels (I've lost track) but at this point I've decided to line them all up in row, everything the man has written, and read them every one, over time. I can offer no higher recommendation than that. ( )

Sometimes you're reading a book, appreciating and enjoying it, and then bam ! Some unexpected twist to the plot occurs, and just like that, you see the book in an entirely different light. The Children's Act contained one of the most powerful endings to a book I've ever read and it will undoubtedly stay with me for a long time. ( )

An interesting book, good narrator 3.5 ⭐️ ( )

Fiona Maye, Ian McEwan's protaganist in The Children Act is a High Court judge specialising in Family Law. At the outset of the novel, 59-year-old Fiona's childless marriage is teetering on the brink when her husband expresses a desire to have an affair.

While she is trying to deal with this personal crisis, Fiona is assigned a particularly knotty case - that of an adolescent boy with leukemia who is refusing blood transfusions that may save his life, due to his family's religious ideals.

McEwan's brief novel touches on the irony of a woman having to make life-or-death decisions with the potential to tear families apart, while the impact of those decisions on her threatens her own family. He also explores exactly what the implications of the legal concept of "the welfare of the child" can really mean. It's a very good examination of an intriguing moral dilemma.

This isn't McEwan's best work by a long chalk; it feels a little bit insubstantial for that, especially in the second half. (He takes half the book just to introduce his main characters, for example). I think, however, that it is a big improvement on eitber Solar or Sweet Tooth, so it is good to see this great novelist hitting his stride again. ( )