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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 found the book slow to start but the end completely and totally made up for that.
I picked this up in a charity shop because I'd recently read The Children Act and loved the spare prose. This was an awful read. Extremely boring navel gazing rubbish. I'm not even going to inflict this on my school library- the usual destination for books I've read - it can go back to the charity shop for someone else to read and try to love. Meh - a waste of reading time. Don't bother!
Henry Perowne's life is just too perfect: he has a great job (as a neurosurgeon), accomplished, civilized kids, and a wife who not only has a fabulous career of her own but also loves sex.
The perfect Henry's perfect life is spoiled this Saturday by various encounters with real people who don't conform with his extremely high expectations.
I don't know what this story was trying to tell me. I found Henry's perfection exceedingly annoying. I couldn't identify with him. The book only got interesting when his narrow sphere was interfered with unexpectedly, but even then he didn't really seem to learn from it. All of real life seemed to happen on the periphery of Henry's vision, without his really noticing, participating, or being affected by it.
The perfect Henry's perfect life is spoiled this Saturday by various encounters with real people who don't conform with his extremely high expectations.
I don't know what this story was trying to tell me. I found Henry's perfection exceedingly annoying. I couldn't identify with him. The book only got interesting when his narrow sphere was interfered with unexpectedly, but even then he didn't really seem to learn from it. All of real life seemed to happen on the periphery of Henry's vision, without his really noticing, participating, or being affected by it.
This book chronicles one day in the life of a neurosurgeoun named Henry Perowne. Starting at the very beginning, this Saturday will be anything but usual for Perowne. Strange events occur and are catlysts for other strange events, leading to a fitting conclusion and closure at the end of the day.
Mixed reviews, and understandably so. This book doesn't have the complexity or emotional wallop of Atonement or the dark humor of Amsterdam (my two favorite McEwan novels)but I found it interesting nonetheless. Yes, the plot is thin and the story did lag in some places. But I think of this book as more of a thinker than a doer. It shows the events of only one day, minute thoughts and events are supposed to occur. Inserting them into the story helps you get to know the main character better and actually see for yourself what it's like to be in his shoes (and in his head) for one day. It's also a post-911 novel showing a post-911 time. It provides a lot of food for thought on the changing world, growing older and adjusting to this new world, terrorism, the necessity of war, and so on. It definitely made me consider and ponder on these issues. This is a well-written, appropriately quiet book, and I enjoyed it very much.
Mixed reviews, and understandably so. This book doesn't have the complexity or emotional wallop of Atonement or the dark humor of Amsterdam (my two favorite McEwan novels)but I found it interesting nonetheless. Yes, the plot is thin and the story did lag in some places. But I think of this book as more of a thinker than a doer. It shows the events of only one day, minute thoughts and events are supposed to occur. Inserting them into the story helps you get to know the main character better and actually see for yourself what it's like to be in his shoes (and in his head) for one day. It's also a post-911 novel showing a post-911 time. It provides a lot of food for thought on the changing world, growing older and adjusting to this new world, terrorism, the necessity of war, and so on. It definitely made me consider and ponder on these issues. This is a well-written, appropriately quiet book, and I enjoyed it very much.
Literally just some dude rattling off what happens in a single day. Waited for ages for the plot to come, and then when the climax did eventually arrive, all I could think was “oh, that’s it?”. Some passages are actually interesting but it’s blanketed in a lot of filler and grey matter that barely enters the brain as you read it
Also stop making the protagonist sexually attracted to his family members, you weirdo
Also stop making the protagonist sexually attracted to his family members, you weirdo
God, I love reading Ian McEwan. He has ways of striking balance between opposing tendencies in his writing that make reading it elegantly challenging.
He takes care to create a character whose world is closed off -- a neurosurgeon easily sucked into the technical detail of his work, forcing pages of technical and procedural jargon on the reader-- while at the same time he shows off slowly and subtly how universal the fixations of his inner thoughts are.
He sets out a book with no structure except the confines of a calendar day and a series of events and gives nearly equal weight to the shocking as the ordinary.
He manages both to infuse even the most mundane tasks of a day with probing contemporary political discourse (what does unjustified war against a sadistic dictator mean? How do we compartmentalize our family and our work in modern society? How do societally compartmentalize the mentally ill?) without letting go of the sense that they're mundane. There is a climax too, thought I feel I would have been satisfied even without it.
He takes care to create a character whose world is closed off -- a neurosurgeon easily sucked into the technical detail of his work, forcing pages of technical and procedural jargon on the reader-- while at the same time he shows off slowly and subtly how universal the fixations of his inner thoughts are.
He sets out a book with no structure except the confines of a calendar day and a series of events and gives nearly equal weight to the shocking as the ordinary.
He manages both to infuse even the most mundane tasks of a day with probing contemporary political discourse (what does unjustified war against a sadistic dictator mean? How do we compartmentalize our family and our work in modern society? How do societally compartmentalize the mentally ill?) without letting go of the sense that they're mundane. There is a climax too, thought I feel I would have been satisfied even without it.
3-3.5 (rewrote this a little bc my english was trash the first time 'round)
okay, so. this book wasn't boring, but it really wasn't very fast-paced either. the book is set to play out in 24 hours, so i knew going in that it was likely going to be lots of contemplation and Thoughts. i like getting into character's heads, and maybe this is where the whole i'm an eighteen-year-old girl and this is about a fifty-year-old guy comes into play again, because while i really didn't mind being in perowne's head all the time i was also wishing i could get a bit of distance from his old man thoughts after 20 pages.
in general, my thoughts about henry perowne ranged from dude really? to just don't care one single bit to sort of an okay guy throughout the book (not specifically in that order). he thought his kids were great and supported them and so did i so we bonded over that.
the way the last 60(?) pages were handled saved this book imo. it didn't get trope-y, which is what i was sort of afraid of. well done book.
all in all not my fav but also no Disgrace so that's always a plus.
TINY SPOILER but that moment??? when he suddenly becomes sherlock holmes and in literally a split second deduces that this guy that's about to punch him in the freaking face has huntington's disease? .... right.
okay, so. this book wasn't boring, but it really wasn't very fast-paced either. the book is set to play out in 24 hours, so i knew going in that it was likely going to be lots of contemplation and Thoughts. i like getting into character's heads, and maybe this is where the whole i'm an eighteen-year-old girl and this is about a fifty-year-old guy comes into play again, because while i really didn't mind being in perowne's head all the time i was also wishing i could get a bit of distance from his old man thoughts after 20 pages.
in general, my thoughts about henry perowne ranged from dude really? to just don't care one single bit to sort of an okay guy throughout the book (not specifically in that order). he thought his kids were great and supported them and so did i so we bonded over that.
the way the last 60(?) pages were handled saved this book imo. it didn't get trope-y, which is what i was sort of afraid of. well done book.
all in all not my fav but also no Disgrace so that's always a plus.
TINY SPOILER but that moment??? when he suddenly becomes sherlock holmes and in literally a split second deduces that this guy that's about to punch him in the freaking face has huntington's disease? .... right.