6.02.2005
Book Report #2
I have a sin to confess: I couldn't bring myself to finish Atonement, Ian McEwan's last novel. I found it mean-spirited, which is not to say that everything I read fluffs and sparkles.
I picked up Saturday ready to make it all up to myself, McEwan, and all the friends I'd lied to. Saturday follows one man through one day, which is an old tune, I know. We like to think that the quotidian can be art, and writers have done their best to bring grace to the every day. Here, McEwan's hero, a neurosurgeon, lives through hours that swing from meaningful to trivial. Each moment lays on top of the next, revealing the character to the reader. He does revisit the past (especially in the figure of his ill mother), but, mostly, Henry Perowne looks to his children's lives and their futures.
Now, parts of this novel irritated me. Perowne's life functions too well, at least in the beginning of the novel. He's very wealthy, loves his wife, has two attractive and artistically gifted children. He doesn't strain against anything, as much as shift against the growing weight of age. When the crises comes, you will be as shocked as the characters are.
Everything rubs up against a large anti-war demonstration in London. Some of the most interesting moments of the book find Perowne, wealthy and satisfied, struggling with the situation in Iraq both philosophically and materially (being stuck in a traffic jam). His wavering is sincere, helpless, and all the more poignant given the reader's vantage point.
I picked up Saturday ready to make it all up to myself, McEwan, and all the friends I'd lied to. Saturday follows one man through one day, which is an old tune, I know. We like to think that the quotidian can be art, and writers have done their best to bring grace to the every day. Here, McEwan's hero, a neurosurgeon, lives through hours that swing from meaningful to trivial. Each moment lays on top of the next, revealing the character to the reader. He does revisit the past (especially in the figure of his ill mother), but, mostly, Henry Perowne looks to his children's lives and their futures.
Now, parts of this novel irritated me. Perowne's life functions too well, at least in the beginning of the novel. He's very wealthy, loves his wife, has two attractive and artistically gifted children. He doesn't strain against anything, as much as shift against the growing weight of age. When the crises comes, you will be as shocked as the characters are.
Everything rubs up against a large anti-war demonstration in London. Some of the most interesting moments of the book find Perowne, wealthy and satisfied, struggling with the situation in Iraq both philosophically and materially (being stuck in a traffic jam). His wavering is sincere, helpless, and all the more poignant given the reader's vantage point.
