Saturday

By: Ian McEwan

Narrated by: Steven Crossley

Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins

Publisher's summary

New York Times best-selling author Ian McEwan's novels have inspired sweeping critical acclaim and won such prestigious awards as the Booker Prize for Amsterdam and the National Book Critics Circle Award for his modern masterpiece, Atonement. With Saturday, McEwan has crafted perhaps his most unique achievement to date.

Neurosurgeon Henry Perowne enjoys life immensely and considers himself fortunate to love the woman he's married to. As he makes his way through an immense London crowd of Iraq protestors, he has a minor automobile accident. His trained eye immediately senses something neurologically wrong with Baxter, the other driver. So when the confrontational Baxter visits the Perowne home later that evening and events take a tragic turn, it is Henry who must employ his skills to save Baxter.

McEwan has been hailed as "one of the most gifted literary storytellers alive" by The New Republic, and Saturday is further proof of that claim.

Listen to an interview with Ian McEwan on Charlie Rose.

©2005 Ian McEwan (P)2005 Recorded Books, LLC

Critic reviews

"Dazzling." (The New York Times)
"A wise and poignant portrait of the way we live now." (Publishers Weekly)
"McEwan is as provocative, transporting, and brilliant as ever as he considers both our vulnerability and our strength, particularly our ability to create sanctuary in a violent world." (Booklist)

Mrs. Dalloway if she were male & millennium

Sheesh, I am glad I didn't see these other reviews before buying. They would have prevented me from one of the best reads I've had in a long time. Paint drying? I suppose if you're looking for Lights! Camera! Action! this will be a disappointment. But if you're a serious reader who enjoys sinking into the consciousness of someone else while being carried along by a really good story--download away. You won't be sorry.

I want to marry this book

I have read some critical reviews of this novel -- it's slow, it's boring, and so on. Maybe it's because I like literary novels and enjoy careful thought and the philosophy that can be found in the mundane, but I did not find this book boring at all. Sure, if you have been raised on thrillers and mysteries, this may not be the book for you, but if you like to actually think about your characters, about the politics of your world, then this will be a meaningful book for you.

Okay, so I know I can't actually marry a book, but I truly felt like I was involved in a lurid tryst with this novel, sneaking off to enjoy bits and pieces, pausing the book more often than usual to think about it, or just prolong the experience, because I knew when the book's time ran out, the love affair did as well.

The novel follows Henry Perowne through one Saturday of his life. It turns the usually female domestic novel on its head -- instead, Henry is the one picking up food for dinner that night; he is the one worrying about the children. It is not solely a domestic novel, though; it is set squarely in its political time, i.e., right before we invaded Iraq. The ambivalence and confusion of that time, the unknowns and the possible future, are perfectly captured. As he is British, Henry is just far enough removed that he can comment intelligently on the situation but can do nothing further than that. Protests in London show Great Britain's frustration but these were ultimately futile.

Henry gets into an altercation with a working class Englishman and the confrontation between their two worlds is revelatory. The climactic scene pools all of the sources for Henry's anxieties into one situation he is forced to confront.

It is astounding how well one can feel they know the characters in a novel like this, just by glimpsing one day of their lives. It makes one wonder how much would be revealed of ourselves in one day, if closely analyzed.

An amazing, thought-provoking book

Every word of this book is impeccably written, nuanced and insightful about things specifially personal to its characters as well as to society in general. McEwan displays a deep knowledge of politics, music, literature, medicine, sports and more, and he described them with often biting, sometimes hilarious accuracy. This journey through a day in the life of a middle-class London brain surgeon and his family is fascinating throughout. Although not the action-packed thriller some readers here seem to want, there are a few hair-raisingly tense moments where the air of impending violence was palpable. The reader had just the right tone of British sophistication and wry humor to keep me listening with great pleasure. I was sorry to hear it end, and highly recommend this book - contrary to the reviews of other readers on this page. Try it!

WIth

I too, almost did not get past the first chapter of this book, having been spoiled by "Enduring Love". I found it tedious and soporific in its myopic descriptiveness, and the book sat in my iPod, visited only occasionally when I had nothing else to do. But I was forced to stay with it, as I was in the midst of a life-altering transcontinental move and temporarily had no convenient high-speed internet access and thus could not easily download a replacement. And lo and behold, by the second half of the book, I found myself caught up in McEwan's focused scope of plot and in his meticulously nuanced and transcendant descriptions of the moment, and by the end I could not put it down and found myself in tears.

Not to be missed if you love Ian McEwan

An amazing adventure traveling with the mind of a person. Twists and turns in a life is brilliantly portrayed in just one twenty-four hour period.
The narrator brought each character to life. As usual, Mr. McEwan gets into extreme details at times , but this style always brings realism of the story to me. He questions values, ethics, human behaviors and subtly shows the consequences when we are off track!

Can't go wrong here

An absorbing story, beautifully read. A fine way to spend a long drive.

Very enjoyable read!

What did you love best about Saturday?

I really enjoyed this book! All of the action takes place in 24 hours and the prose is quite beautiful.

An interesting Saturday that just keeps escalating

if this was your Saturday, it would probably be one that you would remember on your deathbed.
Even the trivial becomes deliciously magnified through the filter of Ian McEwan extraordinary mind. When what should have been the mundane takes a quantum leap, for better or worse you find yourself inside the skin of the protagonist.
Go ahead. Try and put the book down.

An amazing accomplishment

This is the first book, written in the present tense and narrated by an omniscient voice, that I have really enjoyed. Normally, I find present tense novels irritating. But how could McEwan have written this masterpiece any other way, given that it takes place in a single day?

Henry Perowne, a renowned neurosurgeon, wakes up to a world that concerns him. The United States has just invaded Iraq and in the early hours of Saturday morning--having had a disturbed night's sleep--Henry awakes to see a burning plane in the sky. Written long before 9/11, nevertheless the threat of Islamic terrorists plagues Henry's thoughts.

Henry's day is due to begin with a game of squash with his US anaesthetist - except, on the way to the court his car damages the wing mirror of a vehicle belonging to one of the three men seen moments earlier coming out of a lap-dancing bar. The hoodlums turn nasty, engaging in the kind of East End behaviour typical of the Kray Brothers in the London of the 50s and 60s. Henry is having none of it, despite being outnumbered...but is saved by his recognition that Baxter, the ring-leader appears to have onset Huntingdon's - a disease that distorts the way his head and body move.

Having effected his escape, Henry goes about his day, buying the fish he's about to turn into a stew for a family dinner with wife Rosalind, estranged daughter, Daisy, son Theo and father-in-law John. It's when Rosalind returns home that Baxter and sidekick 'Nige' (who must have followed Henry at some point during the day) force their way into the home and terrorise the family.

As an author who conducts considerable research for my own books, I'm awed at the amount of knowledge McEwan shares about the world of neurosurgery. Yet, at no time did my mind wander or my patience break with the amount of detail included about Huntingdon's. Nor did I ever feel that the novel had turned into a polemic, despite numerous references to the political environment in which the book is set.

Having discovered McEwan fairly late (the other book of his I've read is Amsterdam), I look forward to devouring many more of his novels.

Wonderful, absorbing

You have to like a meditative, introspective literary narrator but this book is eloquent, with many perfect moments to it. True, the reader's attempt at women's voices is pretty bad, but I forgave that because I was so caught up in the book.