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annabelws23 's review for:
Saturday
by Ian McEwan
This year my New Years resolution was to finish every book that I start. It is New Years Eve in 2 days, I have read many books this year, books which were it not for this resolution I might have left unread. But this book. This book is the straw that broke the camels back.
Having read and not enjoyed either of the two books of McEwan’s I have read (Atonement and Enduring Love) I did not have high hopes, but I was willing to give this one a go for the sake of my MA.
It was unbelievably boring for the first 200 pages, which came complete with 20 page breakdown of the minutia of two men in a power-locked squash match and minor peeves at some of his smug self-indulgent quips about his bookish daughter (too bookish if you ask Perowne!) and musician son (how oh how could the great scientifically minded neurosurgeon Perowne have artsy children!!?). I was struggling to get through it but determined to finish nevertheless, even though Henry Perowne is the most self-gratifying uppity nit that I have ever had the misfortune of reading.
What pushed it into unreadable was the burglary scene. Imagine using your diagnosis of the intruders’ Parkinson’s as justification for the sexual humiliation he is inflicting on your daughter? Well that’s he, Henry Perowne, neurosurgeon, who had sex with his wife this morning, does (he likes to bring up his 6 minutes of missionary with no pleasure for his wife a lot turning the course of the book)! What made this scene worse is his daughters reaction after the incident. She has just been forced to undress in front of her whole family in a humiliating manner, so an intruder won’t murder her mother, exposing her hidden pregnancy. Yet she proceeds to joke with “bitter gaiety” about her high school PE teacher forcing her to undress?! She also thinks about her grandfather, who is also watching her undress and whom she has a very strained relationship with.
Despite this traumatic experience she is “bitterly gay”?? Not only this but her grandad (who has the most pretentious name on the planet- Grammaticus) says he believes that the intruder had fallen in love with her as he forced her to recite poetry naked, as if that makes it better!!
I’m not buying it McEwan.
And I’m not finishing it either.
Having read and not enjoyed either of the two books of McEwan’s I have read (Atonement and Enduring Love) I did not have high hopes, but I was willing to give this one a go for the sake of my MA.
It was unbelievably boring for the first 200 pages, which came complete with 20 page breakdown of the minutia of two men in a power-locked squash match and minor peeves at some of his smug self-indulgent quips about his bookish daughter (too bookish if you ask Perowne!) and musician son (how oh how could the great scientifically minded neurosurgeon Perowne have artsy children!!?). I was struggling to get through it but determined to finish nevertheless, even though Henry Perowne is the most self-gratifying uppity nit that I have ever had the misfortune of reading.
What pushed it into unreadable was the burglary scene. Imagine using your diagnosis of the intruders’ Parkinson’s as justification for the sexual humiliation he is inflicting on your daughter? Well that’s he, Henry Perowne, neurosurgeon, who had sex with his wife this morning, does (he likes to bring up his 6 minutes of missionary with no pleasure for his wife a lot turning the course of the book)! What made this scene worse is his daughters reaction after the incident. She has just been forced to undress in front of her whole family in a humiliating manner, so an intruder won’t murder her mother, exposing her hidden pregnancy. Yet she proceeds to joke with “bitter gaiety” about her high school PE teacher forcing her to undress?! She also thinks about her grandfather, who is also watching her undress and whom she has a very strained relationship with.
Despite this traumatic experience she is “bitterly gay”?? Not only this but her grandad (who has the most pretentious name on the planet- Grammaticus) says he believes that the intruder had fallen in love with her as he forced her to recite poetry naked, as if that makes it better!!
I’m not buying it McEwan.
And I’m not finishing it either.