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)

When does the story start????

Disappointing... kept waiting for the story to begin.... guess this is a day in the life... but did not bring the reader in enough to care for the characters that were described in an interesting fashion...
Usually love McEwan...not this time!

disappointed

i have read some of Ian's previous books and loved them which is why I got this one. however, this book goes on and on and on (you get what I'm saying) and so much of it made absolutely no sense. I would get through the first few chapters only to restart it, and after the 4th time (I was really trying to understand and like it, plus I kept thinking that I must have somehow missed something from earlier which would explain why I'm not getting it) I gave up. very disappointed as this is not up to his level.

Useless, boring dribble

My God what a waste of effort trying to get through this piece of useless boring dribble. I have never written a book review before because I have never been so moved to do so. If I could have rated this a "0" or even less I would have. I kept waiting and waitning and waiting for something to happen........... it never did - only the long drawn out thoughts of the main character, or long and boring descriptions of the landscape. Take my word for it - DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME ON THIS ONE when there are so many wonderful alternatives !!!

Dismal

Saturday is a total disaster for anyone looking for good literature. While the audiobook production is first rate, the substance isn't there: the narrative is just that, the author flashing a fancy vocabulary while describing characters and their actions. As a result, the characters are totally one dimensional - I think it is almost an hour in before there is even dialogue. Characters come alive by their actions, words and thoughts (e.g., Lonesome Dove, Vernon God Little), not by pure description.
It seemed as though the work was trying to imitate "To the Lighthouse" and the introspection of the author, but the character here is a boring middle-aged man with no particular insights of any significance. DON'T waste your money.

Boring!

Save your money! This one is a snore!!! BORING!!!Boring

What is the point?

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

No. I kept trying, but got tired of waiting for something besides random thoughts to happen.

What was most disappointing about Ian McEwan’s story?

I could not care about the character.

Which character – as performed by Steven Crossley – was your favorite?

None

Was Saturday worth the listening time?

No, I could not finish it.

Tedious, unethical, weird

I normally love Ian McEwan's books, but in this one he got the balance wrong. He got carried away with his prose, with his research and neglected the story. For much of the book I had no idea where he was going with all of it, but wished he would hurry up about it. I really wanted something to happen - but not enough did, given the length of the novel.

Having just read his new book, "Lessons" and enjoyed it, I was dismayed to find yet more historical background - this time Sadam Hussein's purported weapons of mass destruction and the imminent tipping into the Iraq war. It went on and on.

Early on in the book, I thought the neurosurgeon, Henry Perowne, might have been having a 'neurological event' of his own because he seemed out of sorts and "glided" across his bedroom floor to look out the window. Was he losing consciousness? Having a near death experience? No such luck - just a lot of tedious navel gazing.

A mildly interesting piece is when Daisy reads out one of 'her' poems during the family siege at the hands of the psychopathic and neurologically impaired Baxter. Her grandfather, Gramaticus suggests the poem for her to read that will transform the situation. But is it her poem, or is it one by another poet that he made her learn off by heart as a child? It appears to have been chosen because the old man intuited the right poem for the situation - or did he? That part is not really clear.

Another discordant note is the fact that Perowne eventually operates on the tediously aggressive Baxter's brain after he threatened his and his family's life. I found this at odds with his portrayal as an upstanding neurosurgeon, as in real life it would be a violation of a health professional's ethical guidelines to operate on a person with whom he has such a strong emotional entanglement. If the patient complained to the regulator (he's so disagreeable, he would be likely do so), he would most certainly be struck off the register.

Anyway, overall I'd say, go for another one of McEwan's better works.

Difficult to finish

Very disappointing book. Couldn't make myself care about the characters. Just wanted it to end.

So tedious!

Excruciating! I tried listening years ago when I first purchased it, then again recently. It’s like listening to a self-important relative ramble on and on about minutiae

Distracting Reader May Dull Enjoyment

I adored Steven Crossley's reading of 'Enduring Love'-- it was precisely right. But for 'Saturday', he seems to have imported the same lower-middle class Southern English accent he used for Jed Parry and grafted it onto Perowne's son. Worse, he pitched it a bit higher and re-used the same accent for Perowne's daughter. While the choice barely fits Perowne's young jazz-musician son, it fails completely on his daughter Daisy, who is an Oxford-educated poet. She sounds more like someone who'd be making change in a high street WH Smith.

Then there's the grating American accent Crossley attempts when reading Dr Strauss's lines... simply awful.

As much as these details shouldn't matter, they do colour the experience of listening to this audiobook; after all, the voices need to match the characters. When they don't, it makes listening to dialogue an exercise in suspending belief, one that prevents the listening from ever becoming immersive.