Read about another entry on the list.Saturday by Ian McEwan
The arc of Saturday is also what establishes Ian McEwan’s eighth novel in readers’ minds, particularly a reader who has read James Joyce’s Ulysses, since the book features a man’s journey about town and back home in a 24-hour period—February 15, 2003, the day of Britain’s largest demonstration against the Iraq War. In the morning, 49-year-old neurosurgeon Henry Perowne sees a burning plane smoking across the sky, and this image sets the tone for the entire day. Henry goes out to play squash, but his path gets diverted by anti-war protests, at which point he gets into a car accident. Later he buys fish before visiting his mother, and returns home to cook a family dinner, which is interrupted by two knife-wielding assailants. The book ends at around 5:15 in the morning, the beginning of a new day but the end of an era.
Saturday also appears on John Mullan's lists of ten of the best good doctors in literature and ten of the best prime ministers in fiction.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
