Saturday

Ian McEwan

I saw Saturday on others' top ten lists and of course it was well received when it was published a couple of years ago. And, reading it, I could accept that it's perfectly crafted and the bodywork gleams. But McEwan's story of a day in the life of neurosurgeon Henry Perowne doesn't have any of the momentum I enjoyed in his earlier novels. Saturday begins with Perowne spotting a plane on fire over Heathrow, just as he's waking up. It's also the day the Iraq protesters snake through London in lo ng columns. Big stories. But mid-morning Perowne has a private brush with violence when his car touches another and three low-lifes try to shake him down for the repairs. He escapes the confrontation but he'll encounter the trio again before the day is out.

Henry Perowne. Don't you find the name terribly just so? For a neurosurgeon, I mean. But the Londony life lived by Perowne's family is unengaging. Is McEwan's message just that the fragile, moneyed middle classes are preoccupied by terrorism and other amorphous anxieties even after the mortgage is paid off? Because I didn't detect any other. Even the plane-on-fire, so rich in symbolism, and the "balloon moment" for those of us who enjoyed Enduring Love, reveals itself later on in the book to be a hollow element in the plot.