Ian McEwan, Saturday
Saturday is a single day in the life of 48-year-old Henry Perowne, a renowned neurosurgeon.
Awoken at night with a sense of excitement, waiting for something to happen, Henry Perowne is looking out from the window of his London apartment. What he sees casts a gloom on his day: a plane is flying to Heathrow, wing aflame. From then on, Henry’s excitement grows into an uneasy feeling, which refuses to leave him all day. Before the end of the day, something will indeed happen, which will not take the shape Henry imagines.
Through his consciousness of this Saturday, we get a precise idea of Henry Perowne’s whole life, his happy and fulfilled days, his passion for his job, his enduring love for his wife Rosalind, his pride in his two children who are each on the path to success, one as a poet, the other as a blues guitarist.
Henry Perowne realizes, as the day progresses, that it is not possible to shield oneself and his family from the threats of an outside world, more and more menacing in a post 9/11 atmosphere. Fears of terrorism, the impeding war with Irak, everything concurs to Perowne’s unease. All day, he struggles with paranoia, his own undecided feelings about the war, and the perverse combined effect of medias and politics on people’s consciousness:
He’s lost the habits of scepticism, he’s becoming dim with contradictory opinions, he isn’t thinking clearly, and, just as bad, he thinks he isn’t thinking independently.
However, the danger he feels imminent will not come from terrorism but from something closer to home: from Perowne’s own underestimation of a potentially dangerous situation, of his own error in judgment. He realizes that every action can have unforeseen and far-reaching consequences.
As usual, Ian McEwan shows incredible insight into the human soul. His novel is very believable because the author is able to draw the small variations in mood and thought, the trivial things that pass in our mind almost unnoticed, the pettiness sometimes, along with the greater ideas and ideals. Henry Perowne is a very humane, genuine and flawed character. In a single day, he makes makes sense of his life, his achievements, his failures, his regrets, and this scientific atheist who has already understood the fragility of life and arbitrariness of fate, will learn a new lesson: that he cannot and must not shield himself from the large and unsafe world beyond his cozy life. A very good novel by a brilliant writer…
Rating: 4/5
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Comments
No comments yet.
Leave a comment