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![Saturday by Ian McEwan 4th (fourth) Edition [Paperback(2006)] by Ian McEwan](https://assets.thestorygraph.com/assets/placeholder-cover-a3ae92250eb3301e32dc3eabf8d50576c2f047dda89f6ee7cfa9a859cb1fd746.jpg)
3.48 AVERAGE
3.48 AVERAGE
I just thought it was ok. Too much description-and the book just didn't flow very well.
Saturday wasn't bad, but boy, was it a long read. A style almost, but not entirely like stream of consciousness, written as is McEwan is being paid by the word. The not-really-stream-of-consciousness makes it at times hard to follow the story, as did the 12 page description of a squash match, a sport only marginally more interesting to watch/read about than... god, who knows? A really boring sport.
One Saturday in the life of privileged middle-aged neurosurgeon who is very clear in his opinions on people who don't agree with warmongering. (And people who are not as privileged as him.)
If it weren't for having to read it for uni, I would have quit halfway through the squash match.
One Saturday in the life of privileged middle-aged neurosurgeon who is very clear in his opinions on people who don't agree with warmongering. (And people who are not as privileged as him.)
If it weren't for having to read it for uni, I would have quit halfway through the squash match.
I was recommended this book by a good friend, and I myself am a big fan of McEwan's books. Unfortunately, I just didn't take to this book and found it quite slow and boring. I just didn't get it.
McEwan's prose and description of objects, situations and thoughts are still amazing though.
McEwan's prose and description of objects, situations and thoughts are still amazing though.
I would have delightedly given this book four stars, if it was written by another author, say, Martin Amis. This way I could assume that it's a parody, showing the contemporary writer's [futile] attempts at writing something deep, thought provoking and beautiful, bundling the holy trinity of modern literature (Proust, Joyce and Woolf) into one, when he has no understanding or compassion for the characters. Where else would you find a potential poet laureate with a name like Grammaticus?
But I am familiar with Ian McEwan's writing, and know that no joke was intended. The shallow and one dimensional characters, leaving the life of the successful up to the most common cliches, the pretentious prose, using adjectives ad nauseam (he simply can't do without adjectives, and so you have to deal with 'warm the wines in centrally heated air' or 'nicely weighted knife') were meant for real and were bad enough, but seems an excess of 25 cent words was not enough for Mr. McEwan, and he takes to professional jargon to intimidate the reader.
The touch of banality was just unbearable.
But I am familiar with Ian McEwan's writing, and know that no joke was intended. The shallow and one dimensional characters, leaving the life of the successful up to the most common cliches, the pretentious prose, using adjectives ad nauseam (he simply can't do without adjectives, and so you have to deal with 'warm the wines in centrally heated air' or 'nicely weighted knife') were meant for real and were bad enough, but seems an excess of 25 cent words was not enough for Mr. McEwan, and he takes to professional jargon to intimidate the reader.
The touch of banality was just unbearable.
funny
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
“No woman in a burqa (or a hijab or a burkini) has ever done me any harm. But I was sacked (without explanation) by a man in a suit. Men in suits missold me pensions and endowments, costing me thousands of pounds. A man in a suit led us on a disastrous and illegal war. Men in suits led the banks and crashed the world economy. Other men in suits then increased the misery to millions through austerity. If we are to start telling people what to wear, maybe we should ban suits.”
Henry Stewart
London
Henry Stewart
London
I listened to this on audible and feel like I would have enjoyed it more had I actually read it. It was a good book but I struggled to pay attention to it.
https://clavie.co/2019/07/30/book-review-saturday/
I have mixed feelings about this novel. At times I thought the amount of detail is great however some of the sums of the one-star review this novel up perfectly at the same time! Particularly the ones that went into great detail, hence the mocking of this novel in terms of how it is written in excruciating detail that was difficult to follow at times because it is boring listening to the smallest mundane details.
Henry Perowne judges all of the protestors as being uninformed about the true nature of Saddam’s regime, all due to speaking with ONE person he spoke with who were tortured there. It is a very clumsy attempt to give the character’s opinion in this case.
Perowne’s character is a person with Western values which is clear to see this is really McEwan voicing his own opinions with the amount of boring detail in this rather than a character who simply comes down on one well-defined side of an issue. To me, it is seen as a busy neurosurgeon who has no time to search out other opinions or else truly feels that war is the right move and that it is as his leaders say, for humanitarian reasons.
Later on, we see a different view from Daisy, in the form of an argument in the kitchen. There is a bet where Perowne says that Iraq will be flowering in freedom in five years and Daisy says it will be a mess. I found it interesting that the opposing view is personified by a very young person, implying immaturity, youthful idealism and so on.
The car crash scene with the tough guy was simply farcical. Where the brain surgeon has to think fast, and recognises some horrible debilitating disease in his assailant, who, it turns out, is self-conscious about it.
The talented children I found very annoying: the boy plays the blues from the comfort of his London mansion and the girl is a poet. Some lines of her poetry that McEwan proudly mentions are “watermarks of ecstasy”. Watermarks of ecstasy? She won the Newdigate prize for it. Does McEwan consider that good poetry? The title of her collection is, “My Saucy Bark.” What? It is a bark as in boat but the other definitions work just as well.
One quote I did enjoy, however: “Fiction is too humanly flawed, too sprawling and hit-and-miss to inspire uncomplicated wonder at the magnificence of human ingenuity, of the impossible dazzling achieved. Perhaps only music has such purity.”
Overall, this was a densely written book that took a bit of patience. I enjoyed it at times and found it tedious at others. Although it was well written, the prose was a bit pretentious and the main character’s stream of consciousness narrative could be so boring. At times the family at the center of the story was a little too perfect to believe. The plot and details stretched far too long; you could read from page 2, skip 30 pages and not much has changed.
I have mixed feelings about this novel. At times I thought the amount of detail is great however some of the sums of the one-star review this novel up perfectly at the same time! Particularly the ones that went into great detail, hence the mocking of this novel in terms of how it is written in excruciating detail that was difficult to follow at times because it is boring listening to the smallest mundane details.
Henry Perowne judges all of the protestors as being uninformed about the true nature of Saddam’s regime, all due to speaking with ONE person he spoke with who were tortured there. It is a very clumsy attempt to give the character’s opinion in this case.
Perowne’s character is a person with Western values which is clear to see this is really McEwan voicing his own opinions with the amount of boring detail in this rather than a character who simply comes down on one well-defined side of an issue. To me, it is seen as a busy neurosurgeon who has no time to search out other opinions or else truly feels that war is the right move and that it is as his leaders say, for humanitarian reasons.
Later on, we see a different view from Daisy, in the form of an argument in the kitchen. There is a bet where Perowne says that Iraq will be flowering in freedom in five years and Daisy says it will be a mess. I found it interesting that the opposing view is personified by a very young person, implying immaturity, youthful idealism and so on.
The car crash scene with the tough guy was simply farcical. Where the brain surgeon has to think fast, and recognises some horrible debilitating disease in his assailant, who, it turns out, is self-conscious about it.
The talented children I found very annoying: the boy plays the blues from the comfort of his London mansion and the girl is a poet. Some lines of her poetry that McEwan proudly mentions are “watermarks of ecstasy”. Watermarks of ecstasy? She won the Newdigate prize for it. Does McEwan consider that good poetry? The title of her collection is, “My Saucy Bark.” What? It is a bark as in boat but the other definitions work just as well.
One quote I did enjoy, however: “Fiction is too humanly flawed, too sprawling and hit-and-miss to inspire uncomplicated wonder at the magnificence of human ingenuity, of the impossible dazzling achieved. Perhaps only music has such purity.”
Overall, this was a densely written book that took a bit of patience. I enjoyed it at times and found it tedious at others. Although it was well written, the prose was a bit pretentious and the main character’s stream of consciousness narrative could be so boring. At times the family at the center of the story was a little too perfect to believe. The plot and details stretched far too long; you could read from page 2, skip 30 pages and not much has changed.
slow-paced
Loveable characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Well-written. Some of the scenes were a drag though, like four pages describing a squash game and four pages of medical terms describing a surgery which I just skimmed.