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    Saturday
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    Saturday
    Ebook375 pages6 hours

    Saturday

    By Ian McEwan

    3.5/5

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    NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The Booker Prize winner and bestselling author of Atonement follows an ordinary man through a Saturday whose high promise gradually turns nightmarish in this “dazzling [and] powerful” novel (The New York Times).

    Henry Perowne—a neurosurgeon, urbane, privileged, deeply in love with his wife and grown-up children—plans to play a game of squash, visit his elderly mother, and cook dinner for his family. But after a minor traffic accident leads to an unsettling confrontation, Perowne must set aside his plans and summon a strength greater than he knew he had in order to preserve the life that is dear to him.

    Don’t miss Ian McEwan’s new novel, Lessons.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRandom House Publishing Group
    Release dateApr 11, 2006
    ISBN9780307277015
    Author

    Ian McEwan

    Ian McEwan (Aldershot, Reino Unido, 1948) se licenció en Literatura Inglesa en la Universidad de Sussex y es uno de los miembros más destacados de su muy brillante generación. En Anagrama se han publicado sus dos libros de relatos, Primer amor, últimos ritos (Premio Somerset Maugham) y Entre las sábanas, las novelas El placer del viajero, Niños en el tiempo (Premio Whitbread y Premio Fémina), El inocente, Los perros negros, Amor perdurable, Amsterdam (Premio Booker), Expiación (que ha obtenido, entre otros premios, el WH Smith Literary Award, el People’s Booker y el Commonwealth Eurasia), Sábado (Premio James Tait Black), En las nubes, Chesil Beach (National Book Award), Solar (Premio Wodehouse), Operación Dulce, La ley del menor, Cáscara de nuez, Máquinas como yo, La cucaracha y Lecciones y el breve ensayo El espacio de la imaginación. McEwan ha sido galardonado con el Premio Shakespeare. Foto © Maria Teresa Slanzi.

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    Reviews for Saturday

    3.5/5

    3,112 ratings109 reviews

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    • 4/5
      A book that tries to describe a day in the life of its main character without being boring. It succeeds.
    • 2/5
      Oh my gawd, I finally suffered through this ‘best book of the year’. What am I not understanding???The books summary speaks of what would have been an ordinary day for Henry Perowne, doing some errands and spending time with family. But a minor traffic incident leads to an unsettling confrontation that turns his day nightmarish. This incident is highlighted to be the crux of the story. The traffic incident itself is 20 pages, while the climax, i.e. the ‘nightmare’, is 25 pages. The books is 289 pages long. The rest are long drawn out babbling of his inner thoughts, his identity and his happiness, pandering of his surgical skills, the physicality of a racquetball game, his wife’s family and her alluring self, Daisy’s poetic talents, Theo’s natural blues nature, and an argument over being involved in the Iraq War or not. The best parts of the book are, per usual McEwan style, the relationships. In this case, my favorite is that of Henry’s mother, who is now lost in the “mental death” of dementia. His visit to her is poignant and painfully realistic.I feel cheated by all the review quotes from book cover/back:“Dazzling… Powerful…McEwan has shown how we… live today.” - New York TimesSeriously? How many families has a dad (Henry) who is a neurosurgeon, a mom (Rosalind) who is a lawyer, a daughter (Daisy) who is publishing a book of poems at age 22, a son (Theo) who is moving to NYC to headline a blues club at age 18, all of whom living in a seven thousand square feet Roman villa, east of London? The cranky, drunken father-in-law l lives in a French chateau, too. I am willing to concede that some issues transcend all social classes regardless of wealth and talent – cranky, drunken in-law, a mom with dementia. “Finely wrought and shimmering with intelligence” – The New York Times Book ReviewThere’s a fine line between verbose vs. intelligence. McEwan goes into excessive descriptions of the aforementioned professions’ skill sets and racquetball, almost as though to show-off his ability to do research. It almost reads like he phoned-a-friend and wrote down everything he was told. He exhibited the same problem with “The Innocent”, rambling on about technical details.“McEwan is a supremely gifted… Saturday is a tightly wound tour de force.” – Washington Post Book World Tightly wound? I was so bored that I read three other books between the pages of this book.“This extraordinary book is not a political novel. It is a novel about consciousness that illuminates the sources of politics.” – The NationThis is a two-part irrelevant comment. First, despite McEwan choosing the “Saturday” being February 15 2003, the day of the demonstration against the 2003 Iraq invasion of Iraq in London, not even the book summary on the back cover suggest anything political. Second, several consciousness sources were identified – familial, professional, moral values, even sexual; to summarize and artificially push these towards politics is twisting the points. More accurately, there is a valid statement towards political engagement, to do so or not, but not necessarily politics itself.“Saturday is an exemplary novel, engrossing and sustained. It is undoubtedly McEwan’s best.” – The SpectatorSee above about being bored and read three other books. Engrossing? I think not.“Read the last 100 pages at one sitting – the pace and the thrill allow it… Exhilarating.” – Los Angeles TimesI put up with this book awaiting the thrilling last 100 pages. Then I was deep within 100 pages, and still put it down for long stretches. Even the climax lasted only 25 pages within the 100. The resolution occurred amazingly quickly as though it’s time to call-it-a-day, quite literally! Saturday is done, over, finito!
    • 3/5
      This novel follows Henry Perowne, neurosurgeon, through an eventful Saturday. It starts off normal enough--he plays squash with a friend, visits his mom with Alzheimers, buys ingredients for the night's dinner. He is eager to see his daughter, who is currently in Parus, and hoping she will make up with her grandfather over dinner.The day starts off strange, as he watches what he thinks is a plane crash or terrorist attack. He has a minor car accident in the confusion of road closures around a protest march. And that accident comes back to haunt his entire family.I found this novel to start off very very slowly. The last hundred or so pages were more lively, but I was already tired of the book by then. This reminded me of Mrs Dalloway in the way it covers one day in a life.
    • 4/5
      quickly read
    • 5/5
      Not my usual choice of reading but I found this Ian McEwan forced me to really care about the people on the pages, even though they were not my type at all. Later I found myself so afraid for them that I had to put the book down and return later. Never happened before.A masterclass read.
    • 4/5
      Great writing, this author is as a close to a character as is possible and succeeds in putting into words experiences of this character that are hardly possible to define, but reckognizable once you read them. I especially like the descriptions of the neurosurgeon at work, completely happy in a fully controlled world. It is difficult to pinpoint the theme or subject of the novel, definitely multifaceted. The title e.g. refers to a situation in between of work and leasure, you are not supposed to work that day, but it's not completely free time either, that would be Sunday. The main character is happiest at work, but is aging and likely to have to let go as he ages. He is moving towards middle age, towards Sunday.
    • 5/5
      Saturday, February 15, 2003 doesn't seem that long ago but when McEwan talks about the political situation I realized how much has happened since then. mrsgaskell has alread talked about the huge anti-war demonstration that took place in London that day while Dr. Henry Perowne was filling his Saturday with other events. Despite that outpouring of sentiment, Britain joined the war in Iraq (while Canada, France and other nations stayed away) which was declared on March 19. The provocations for entering Iraq were mostly bogus but it did result in the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's government. Of course, it can be debated if the replacement leaves the people of Iraq any better off. Nevertheless, Britain withdrew all combat troops earlier this year and the US troops are supposed to be out by 2011. Henry Perowne, like many other people at the time, has mixed feelings about the war but, probably because of an encounter with an Iraqi patient who filled him in on the situation in Iraq, tends to support the necessity for ousting Saddam Hussein. His children, on the other hand, are anti-war and this causes some conflict between father and his daughter, Daisy. Mostly, though, Henry Perowne is blessed and recognizes this. He has a fulfilling job, a satisfying relationship with his wife and is very pleased with how his children turned out. There are some flies in the ointment, of course. He's getting older and the rigours of a squash game are starting to get to him. His mother has Alzheimer Disease and no longer recognizes him. His father-in-law drinks to excess and every encounter with him is problematic because of this. All of this pales when his home is invaded by a young tough that he encountered in a car accident earlier in the day. When the situation ends, the whole family is shaken and has to deal with the fallout. When Dr. Perowne is called in to operate on this same individual you can't help but wonder how you would react in the same situation. McEwan is wonderful in his details. The descriptions of surgeries, the squash game, the visit to the nursing home and even the meal preparations are filled with vivid detail so that it felt like I was looking over Perowne's shoulder. Interestingly, McEwan works in a discussion about exactly this style of writing (at p. 67) in discussing Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary which Henry read at his daughter's insistence: At the cost of slowing his mental processes and many hours of his valuable time, he committed himself to the shifting intricacies of these sophisticated fairy stories. What did he grasp, after all? That adultery is understandable but wrong, that nineteenth-century women had a hard time of it, that Moscow and the Russian countryside and provincial France were once just so. If, as Daisy said, the genius was in the detail, then he was unmoved. The details were apt and convincing enough, but surely not so very difficult to marshal if you were halfway observant and had the patience to write them all down. These books were the products of steady, workmanlike accumulation. I don't think I agree with that assessment but if that's McEwan's feeling about his own work then long live steady, workmanlike accumulation! Later on that same page he discusses the magical realism genre that his daughter also made him read. I laughed out loud when I read this comment: 'No more magic midget drummers,' he pleaded with her by post, after setting out his tirade. 'Please, no more ghosts, angels, satans or metamorphoses. When anything can happen, nothing much matters. It's all kitsch to me.' Bravo!
    • 1/5
      One star for the one or so pages that were interesting to read.

      I generally LOVE books that are nothing but the inner thoughts of a character or characters, but man...Henry!!!! Your thoughts are boring A.F!!!

      I enjoyed his thoughts about the surgeries he had to perform recently, but not much else. I definitely didn't need to hear his thoughts about his erections. LOL

      Anyway, great idea for a book but it needs a character with a much more interesting mind.
    • 4/5
      The main character is a neurosurgeon who grapples with consciousness as the firing of neurons and consciousness as all the beauty and pain he experiences every day. It is a sophisticated account of that play inside all our minds, an almost-reconciliation of that tug-of-war between our third-person biology and our first-person understanding of it.
    • 4/5
      Wonderful book, especially liked the first and last parts (although the middle was fine as well). Very interior. I didn't give it 5 stars because the protagonist, the doctor, seemed a little too perfect, limited in some ways but basically a superman. Hard to identify with I guess. But overall a great novel, I need to read more McEwan.
    • 3/5
      Reason read: TBR takedown, Reading 1001, ROOTThis is a story set in London on Saturday, 15 February 2003, as a large demonstration is taking place against the United States' 2003 invasion of Iraq. It is also the story of a family; neurosurgeon, lawyer wife, adult children. The novel examines how we connect with the world, what makes up our world view, and our existence. I enjoyed the book tho it is not his finest. It is contemplative even though the world around it is increasingly violent and dangerous. This has been on my shelf since 2012.
    • 3/5
      Neurosurgeon Henry Perowne has a rare treat - a Saturday off and a family dinner to look forward to later in the evening. But a seemingly meaningless event in the afternoon comes back to haunt him and his family with life-threatening ramifications.With this book, McEwan presents an interesting concept in its style ... everything takes place on one day, which seems a little gimmicky but I was intrigued by the idea and thought McEwan could pull it off (I recalled that the bulk of Atonement took place over just a handful days, even though the entire timeframe of the book spanned many years.). Most of what takes place in Perowne's day is mundane ... He wakes up, watches the news, eats breakfast with son, plays a game of squash with a co-worker, visits his aged mother in a nursing home, picks up food to prepare for dinner, etc. In reading it, I was reminded of Mrs. Dalloway, another book in which it seems that much of what happens is inconsequential. But beneath the surface, McEwan touches on so many deeper concepts, including xenophobia, dementia, neuroscience, paternity, love, the power of art/music/literature, and so on and so on.Understandably then, Saturday is also like Mrs. Dalloway in that everything is pretty much just the internal thoughts of the main character flitting from thing to thing, whether that's recalling how he first met his wife years ago or anticipating an upcoming visit from his daughter. The Iraq war is about to begin as the book takes place, so the fear of terrorism, concerns about the politics of the war, and etc. are always just bubbling beneath the surface. Much of this makes for a slow, contemplative read, but it does provide various tidbits of food for thought.And then there's the character of Baxter who enters the page with a crackle, showing up in a scene charged with violence and fear only to be dispatched quickly. Or so it seems ... until he reappears again, with even more malice and deadly power. These parts of the book seem so out of place with the rest that it almost seems like the reader walked into the wrong set all of sudden. But it seems that was part of McEwan's point ... to show us the randomness of life, to let us know that the terror we fear may be closer to home than the nightly news lets on, to allow for an exploration of how ordinary people react in impossible situations, and so forth.This is a difficult book to summarize easily and it's likely to haunt the reader for sometime afterward. But that's not to say it's a book for everyone. It is very slow for the majority of it (indeed, it sometimes gets too bogged down in the little details), but it also gets very uncomfortable in its sudden outbursts of threats and violence. I'm not sure that I would recommend this particular title as a person's first try with McEwan, but rather would suggest it for those already familiar with his works and therefore aware of what they might be getting into with Saturday.On a side note, I listened to the audiobook version of this book as read by Steven Crossley. I thought this reading was just okay. Crossley wasn't a bad reader, but he didn't stand out an amazing one either. It probably didn't help that much of this book is muted, just focusing on Perowne's internal thoughts, so there's not a great deal of active voice reading to do.
    • 4/5
      One day. That's right. One day. Now imagine what can happen in one day! Ian McEwan is a master story teller and this was a very enjoyable book.
    • 4/5
      Yet another winner from a master of prose. Add to that an intriguing protagonist, sharp medical knowledge and a slow-building, titillating suspense, and I'm hooked. My only quibble was some plausibility issues late in story. This is in the same league as Enduring Love, as to the sinister refrain that never lags.
    • 5/5
      Not McEwan's best novel, but the prose knocked me out on every page. If you like strong writing and deep introspection about post-911 urban life, this is well worth a read.
    • 5/5
      A man awakens early on a pre-dawn Saturday morning and witnesses a plane on fire on its approach to Heathrow. It is February 2003 … the emotions of 9-11 are still raw, even in London. The talk is of war with Iraq; Blair supports Bush’s intent to dethrone Saddam.A few hours later, on his way to his weekly squash game, he gets into a minor traffic accident. His like-new Mercedes has a faint scratch, the other driver’s red BMW is missing a side mirror and has also scraped several parked cars.This sets in motion a chain of events that will culminate in a suprising decision.This is a beautifully written book. There’s a “normalcy” of everyday life about it, and a sense of fate and impending disaster. There are surprises – of the kind that we stumble upon daily. And there is the constant re-examining of our intent, and looking back to what-ifs.
    • 1/5
      This book was a disappointment to me. I was expecting something as well written and entertaining as Atonement, but turned out to be the opposite.The premise of the book was promising, following the events of a doctor's life on a Saturday- his day of rest and relaxation. A fairly boring but easy day. One of his plans is to have a game of squash with one of his colleagues at the hospital, but on the way he has a minor accident with some young thugs. The accident leads to him getting beat up, but not before he diagnoses that the principal guy has a degenerating ailment. The doctor's reveals this to the hoodlums that makes the principal guy, Baxter is his name, lose face and his dominant position with his friends. Although the doctor manages to escape and continue with his life, you can imagine that the thugs are not happy, and are probably looking for him. This is the final part of the story. But in the mean time he goes to have the squash game with his partner- where McEwen spends an inordinately amount of time narrating the game, the hits, the misses, and the frustration of the doctor. This, to me, was the most boring part of the novel even though I used to play handball (i.e., squash without the rackets) when I was in college.
    • 4/5
      A Joycean day-in-the life story. This time instead of a ruminating, dd agent in Dublin, we have a hyper observant neurosurgeon in London. The surgeon's day off moves along crisply, on schedule, as he interacts with his (other) self-actualized family members. But the day is punctuated by events of sheer terror as well.
    • 2/5
      Beautifully descriptive, but way too slow. Abandoned at page 82.
    • 5/5
      This is another outstanding novel by McEwan. In just a few swift strikes, taking mundane and severe events, the author is able to show us the complex roles a man can have, as he stands alone, in a family, in a social and professional realm, in an urban setting and as a citizen of the world. Using these concentric circle, McEwan weaves in our moral, global responsibilities and our local and inner actions which all define who we are and how we are connected to all human beings despite our not realizing it. I found it absolutely brilliant!
    • 2/5
      Saturday is a contemplative book--one reviewer said it's about the way we live now. I'd edit that and say it's about the way the well-to-do live now: with fear that what they have will be taken away, and guilt that maybe they don't deserve it in the first place.

      McEwan's writing is masterful, though he gives us little in the way of characters to care about. A plodding opening and a squash game that goes on for interminable pages are only a couple of examples of what feels like an author showing off his research as opposed to telling a story. There's a possibility for a story here, but too many punches are pulled. It's more like a long essay than a novel.

      This is the first McEwan I've read, and I get the feeling that the glowing reviews come from people who have decided he's a great writer so they'll love him no matter what. Perhaps his earlier works are more interesting; his elegant prose makes me wonder if they're worth a read. But this one is dull.

      Petrea Burchard
      Camelot & Vine
    • 5/5
      I haven't read a book this well written in a long time. Subtle yet with an emotional resonance that sticks with you long after you put it down. Clearly I'm going to seek out other books by this author.
    • 2/5
      I just did not particularly like this book. Much of what happened seemed preposterous. Very little plot, mostly the main character's introspective musings. On the other hand, some of the writing is quite nice and there are several descriptions of things he sees, or thinks he sees, that are worth rereading. I was in the minority of our book club, most really liked it.
    • 4/5
      In spite of the fact that Henry Perowne's world is vastly different from the one in which which most of us live, we share the same emotions. On any day we can be fearful of the world's future; we can be content in a loving yet sometimes touchy family relationships; we can be comfortable in careers, and we can be forced to react to situations that seem unfair, random, or meaningless. As different as Henry's world is to mine, I could relate. I suppose that's a sign of a good author.On the other hand, I can't say that "Saturday" will be a novel I'll never forget. The situations and Henry's reaction to them are at times just too contrived. I really can't envision a street thug such as Baxter so easily softened by the recitation of a poem. I can't believe a neurosurgeon would allow himself to perform surgery after the events of his day on that particular patient. I can't believe the almost surgerical analysis of Theo's blues "three times rounds the twelve bars" and such could have such an emotional effect. Henry seems to be an expert at many things (cooking, wine, music, squash), and totally oblivious to others. The family is a bit too perfect, too artificial.Furthermore, I don't understand this novel as a reaction to 9/11. Terror and fear of a world out of control is not new (remember the atom bomb).The writing at times is beautiful although at times tedious (that squash game!). However, in spite of shortcomings, I'm glad I read "Saturday" and would recommend it to others for its ability to connect each of us in some very vague and almost unexplanable way.
    • 2/5
      Read this because it's a set text on my English Lit course.

      Not as enjoyable as Enduring Love or as deviant and weird as his earlier books (eg The Cement Garden). Very conservative and trying perhaps a bit too hard to apply the Woolf/Proust/Joyce style of literary modernism to 2003. I got the impression that this was a novel by someone who knows full well it will automatically by published and scrutinised by literary journals.

      I could have done without all the details of the squash match & brain surgery, and what story there is felt a bit unlikely: violent gangsters being defeated first by a diagnosis of a brain condition, then later by the reciting of 19th century poetry. I think pepper spray might be better in real life.

      I can only really recommend it for squash-loving brain surgeons.
    • 4/5
      This story covers a single Saturday in the life of Henry Perowne, a London neurosurgeon. Most of the book covers pretty mundane activities as Perowne goes through his normal weekend routine and planning for a dinner party with his family. At first, I kept on thinking that this was a male version of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway - a single day, planning for a dinner party, and lots of wandering thoughts. But the book has a definite twist when Perowne gets into a minor traffic accident with a punk which later leads to a serious confrontation. Although the first 2/3 of the book is a bit introspective and meandering, it definitely picks up and becomes more of a story about what we value in life. If you liked McEwan's Atonement, you'll enjoy this one.
    • 2/5
      Like my (upcoming) review of Perdido Street Station, this was written as I went along. My mum told me to read this book just so that I've read something of McEwan's work, to get an idea of the East Anglia style -- I was once planning to do the same writing course.

      The first ten pages bored me. Blah, blah, blah, mostly medical procedure, a doctor's life is so busy, blahblahblah -- a scenario I know well as a doctor's daughter, that doesn't really seem to merit ten pages to me. It got old fast in real life; in print, it's even worse. The prose is quite ordinary, and lingers on topics I don't find particularly interesting: pages on pages about medical techniques, a couple of pages about the main character's son's music, a paragraph about the advances in kettles, pages in which the main character denounces the value of stories, half a chapter devoted to a squash game I couldn't care less about...

      Despite that, there's something about it that kept me reading. Something vaguely hypnotic. I didn't find it "dazzling... profound and urgent" as the cover promised. I found it dry, plodding, boring, stolid. By seventy-eight pages in, the guy hasn't left his home yet and the most exciting thing is the plane in flames, which is dismissed in about two pages, near the beginning.

      Strangely enough, I thought it did pick up near the end. Most of the drama was anti-climatic and sandwiched between pages and pages of irrelevant detail, but I tried to read it with the view that the book is meant to be about an ordinary guy going about his ordinary life. The prose mimics that, and the pages and pages of description enforce it. It took me ages to decide how many stars to give it. I'm not sure there was much to really like or dislike. The idea could have been interesting, but I'm not sure there's realistically a way to write about an ordinary man going through his mostly ordinary day in a way that keeps someone genuinely interested throughout. The build up was needed so you could care enough about the characters, but all the build up made me bored with them. I definitely don't think this is a "modern classic" or whatever. I don't think it has the strength to last.

      I might try something else of this guy's, to see if I like him better when he's not restricting himself to one day of an ordinary guy's life. Any recommendations?
    • 4/5
      I quite liked "Saturday" which is very well-written and true in some way that "Atonement" did not feel true to me. A much better novel, imho.
    • 3/5
      "...it interests him less to have the world reinvented; he wants it explained."

      Literature still has something to say to science.

      Against the backdrop of the pending invasion of Iraq, a very rational and orderly neurosurgeon is menaced by a very irrational hooligan. Poetry comes to the rescue.
    • 5/5
      Take the bones of Mrs. Dalloway and hang the flesh of a McEwan tale of the darkness in even the most "normal" of people in our contemporary world and you have an awesome, awesome book.