Saturday
Ian McEwan
I had read about this book as an intricate study of the spectacular and mundane events that can be contained within a single day's time; unfortunately, I was also expecting a superb companion to Atonement, McEwan's masterpiece and literary meditation. While Saturday does have its merits and definitely displays a fascinating array of fine prose, it fails to live up to McEwan's other work and drags its feet far too much in the mundane to truly captivate readers. The premise itself is at once simple and complex; McEwan has carefully chosen his protagonist and draws him with astonishing clarity. Because the book possesses an extremely unsteady characterization-to-plot ratio, readers know Henry Perowne thoroughly before he actually does anything and, consequently, can guess at much of the plot and much of his revelations. It is here where the book begins to go slightly awry.
Perowne may be incessantly drawn out, with his thoughts exposed page in and page out, but he isn't particularly sympathetic. He is kind of a jerk, actually, and takes advantage of bourgeois medical training, compromising an already compromised man. Though he (rightfully) has doubts, his so-called concessions are slight and are condescending. Throughout the book, Henry (and McEwan) tries to mask the fact that he isn't particularly interesting, nor particularly kind or caring. Sure, he is an excellent family man, but he lacks basic sympathy. While he is not particularly vile and it is interesting to be exposed to a normal character, the depth with which Henry is presented isn't justified by Henry. He simply isn't that interesting, and the long, unnecessarily drawn out passages in which he gets lost in his daydreams are particularly uninspiring. Instead of presenting an interesting character study on the modern British everyman, McEwan settles for an absolute dullard, proving perhaps that life is boring and mundane but making for an uninteresting novel.
The plot, while contrived, is intriguing and comes in just in time to rescue the reader. I do not give up on books and I was damn determined to finish this one today, but I was lost in the quagmire and was about ready to give up when the climax came, about fifty pages too early. Instead of building suspence up to a palpable crescendo, McEwan introduces a twisting, terrifying plot element only to completely abandon it until it sneaks up on the reader again, after a midsection of utter malaise.
It isn't that McEwan is a bad, or even boring, writer. Atonement too had its long passages of reflection and suffered from a lack of concrete plot. What sets Saturday apart is its concentration on a subject that does not warrant the scope of a novel. Maybe the book does accurately detail a spectacular day in a mundane life; even when extraordinary things happen, they usually occupy only an hour or two at a time, at most. The problem is that McEwan's insights and daydreams, while vividly imagined in stunningly crafed prose, cannot alone sustain the book's 290 pages. McEwan is undoubtedly gifted, and enough of his talent shines through to make me want to read his other books, but, in the end, Saturday succeeds mostly as an argument for exaggeration and hyperbole in literature. As a meditation on the mundane, it is excellent, but that doesn't make it a particularly thrilling read.
Grade: B
Ian McEwan
I had read about this book as an intricate study of the spectacular and mundane events that can be contained within a single day's time; unfortunately, I was also expecting a superb companion to Atonement, McEwan's masterpiece and literary meditation. While Saturday does have its merits and definitely displays a fascinating array of fine prose, it fails to live up to McEwan's other work and drags its feet far too much in the mundane to truly captivate readers. The premise itself is at once simple and complex; McEwan has carefully chosen his protagonist and draws him with astonishing clarity. Because the book possesses an extremely unsteady characterization-to-plot ratio, readers know Henry Perowne thoroughly before he actually does anything and, consequently, can guess at much of the plot and much of his revelations. It is here where the book begins to go slightly awry.
Perowne may be incessantly drawn out, with his thoughts exposed page in and page out, but he isn't particularly sympathetic. He is kind of a jerk, actually, and takes advantage of bourgeois medical training, compromising an already compromised man. Though he (rightfully) has doubts, his so-called concessions are slight and are condescending. Throughout the book, Henry (and McEwan) tries to mask the fact that he isn't particularly interesting, nor particularly kind or caring. Sure, he is an excellent family man, but he lacks basic sympathy. While he is not particularly vile and it is interesting to be exposed to a normal character, the depth with which Henry is presented isn't justified by Henry. He simply isn't that interesting, and the long, unnecessarily drawn out passages in which he gets lost in his daydreams are particularly uninspiring. Instead of presenting an interesting character study on the modern British everyman, McEwan settles for an absolute dullard, proving perhaps that life is boring and mundane but making for an uninteresting novel.
The plot, while contrived, is intriguing and comes in just in time to rescue the reader. I do not give up on books and I was damn determined to finish this one today, but I was lost in the quagmire and was about ready to give up when the climax came, about fifty pages too early. Instead of building suspence up to a palpable crescendo, McEwan introduces a twisting, terrifying plot element only to completely abandon it until it sneaks up on the reader again, after a midsection of utter malaise.
It isn't that McEwan is a bad, or even boring, writer. Atonement too had its long passages of reflection and suffered from a lack of concrete plot. What sets Saturday apart is its concentration on a subject that does not warrant the scope of a novel. Maybe the book does accurately detail a spectacular day in a mundane life; even when extraordinary things happen, they usually occupy only an hour or two at a time, at most. The problem is that McEwan's insights and daydreams, while vividly imagined in stunningly crafed prose, cannot alone sustain the book's 290 pages. McEwan is undoubtedly gifted, and enough of his talent shines through to make me want to read his other books, but, in the end, Saturday succeeds mostly as an argument for exaggeration and hyperbole in literature. As a meditation on the mundane, it is excellent, but that doesn't make it a particularly thrilling read.
Grade: B
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