Saturday - Ian McEwan

 I read Atonement when the book and movie were big news and thought very little of it.   It struck me as trivial, a little bit seedy, and overly judgmental.   It put me off reading any more McEwen until I came across Saturday, which is a wholly different kettle of fish.

Saturday is very simply a day in the life of neurosurgeon Henry Perowne, who lives in some style in a London square close by the Post Office Tower.   His day begins with sleeplessness.   He looks out of the bedroom window and sees a plane, its engine on fire, heading towards Heathrow.   This is February 2003, eighteen months after the attack on New York's Twin Towers and on the eve of the invasion of Iraq.   Indeed, an anti-war demonstration is due to take place not far from Henry's square later in the day.   So when Henry sees the burning plane his thoughts inevitably turn to Terror.   Should he phone the emergency services?   Surely they already know....?   Henry goes downstairs to watch the news on TV.   Ultimately the plane lands, no one dies, it's something and nothing and Henry considers himself justified.

He goes off to his Saturday morning squash game and gets involved in a road rage incident which does have considerable consequences later in the day.

What makes this a brilliant book is the depth which Atonement so patently lacked.   Here we become immersed in the Perowne family who, as it happens, will be gathered together on this special Saturday.   They are elite (the house is inherited from Mrs Perowne's late mother, who also owned the French chateau in which the widower, the famous poet John Grammaticus usually resides) but they are also made interesting.   Where McEwen ventures into the extraordinary is in his descriptions of Henry's work - McEwen gives detailed acknowledgement of the help he received from actual neurosurgeons.  Without this level of detail I wonder if the final story twist would be believeable.   I suspect we have to be convinced that only Henry can do what he is called upon to do.   In my case I was already stunned and sold because Henry met his wife Rosalind when she went blind as I did and had an earlier version of the same neurosurgery I had twelve years ago.   With the same positive result, I'm pleased to say.