Saturday

Written by Ian McEwan, Saturday treads the path of that stream-of-consciousness that other postmodern works such as Mrs. Dalloway and The Hours traverse. Mapped over the course of a single day, this book is a little tricky to get into because it is so overloaded and sometimes convoluted with extreme detail about the seconds and moments that make up the day and the feelings towards it and the state of the word. But once you get over the initial complexity of it, it’s really very compelling and a hard book to put down. 

Successful neurosurgeon, Henry Perowne, is looking forward to his Saturday off. He’s got a game of squash planned, a visit to his mother’s, a sit-in on his son’s rehearsal, and then a family dinner to celebrate the return of his daughter from France. But from the moment he wakes in the small hours of the morning and witnesses a plane crash, the day goes from strange to worse. He has a minor car accident and crosses paths with Baxter, an aggressive thug with a degenerative disease, who then marks Henry as his latest victim for exercising some torment. 

One thing that you come away from this book with is how much of a complex writer McEwan is. Admittedly, I haven’t read any of his other works, but what struck me most with this novel is just how much is achieved in a relatively short page space. The book is a mere 270 pages long and yet there is so much depth in it, not just in the central focaliser of Henry, but the state of the world in which he’s living as well as his relationship and attitude towards it, made all the more intriguing as the book is written in the third person omniscient. We get this great depiction of a mind that is always whirring with activity and can actually feel the sensations that he experiences through the in-depth, stream-of-consciousness narration. McEwan writes in incredible detail, really exploring the sensory and sensational powers of literature. 

Simultaneously, it’s a piece that is actually sort of ironic in that a lot of it seems to feature that age-old binary of science vs. art. Henry, as a neurosurgeon is very rational and analytic and his narration reflects that, being incredibly detailed, explanatory, and analytic. For the most part it’s actually kind of beautiful, although I will say that some of the parts where he goes into surgical procedures and operations that he’s performed over the years became a bit too graphic for me. 

Ultimately though, this book that dances through the present and the past (with various flashbacks told in just as much detail as the present moments) is a wonderful read and it really does make you consider just how powerful narratives and the arts (definitely in terms of literature) are. 

Filled with action, suspense, flashbacks, drama, wonderfully articulate stream-of-consciousness, and comedy, Saturday is a book that I began reading a little dubiously, but ended up being completely enveloped in it. It’s a striking piece of fiction that I thoroughly enjoyed and what I love even more about it is the fact that it makes you feel the sensations of the character as well as reflect and think about your own life and relationships and attitudes with the world around you. For a book to make you think about all that is, I think, just remarkable.