SATURDAY
By Ian McEwan
Vintage Books. £7.99
ISBN 978 0 099 46968
This book has received such plaudits already that it scarcely needs me to add my praise. It has been called ‘dazzling’, ‘remarkable’ and ‘brilliant’ (lots of times), and it is all those things. But I think Saturday is especially important because of what it tells us about our world, the warning it gives us Christians.
The novel traces a day in the life of Henry Perowne, an intelligent and likeable neurosurgeon at the peak of his career. By choosing this demanding form, McEwan takes on the 20th century’s greats, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. Like them he gets under his subject’s skin, travelling backwards in time to recount important events and history from his central character’s life, while maintaining an intricate, and multi-stranded plot which pushes relentlessly on to its climax.
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