sminismoni 's review for:

Saturday by Ian McEwan

DID NOT FINISH

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I struggled. I swore I would finish it. I collapsed 50 pages short of the end. Short summary: A day in the life of a narcissistic neurosurgeon. Characters so flat and lifeless they may as well have been cardboard. Stereotyping and cliche in spadefulls. I began to mentally vomit when Perone (aka God) decides to heroically operate on the home intruder, whose head injury he himself caused. Mr McEwan, stick to what you know. I am a doctor and no surgeon would EVER operate on someone that three hours earlier had tried to rape his daughter and that he himself had assaulted. Yeah I get the parrallels with the invasion of Iraq and the smug assurance of the invading Western powers. Very clever. But it doesn't make up for the hollow ring of this book and it's self-indulgent tone.