Saturday is one very long day in the life of neurosurgeon, Henry Perowne, in February 2003 - sort of like Mrs. Dalloway or Leopold Bloom. It starts early with Perowne looking out over the square in front of his London home and seeing what looks like a plane on fire flying across the sky. The sense of foreboding created by this scene sows seeds of disquiet in the reader, a disquiet that builds steadily. Henry's day proceeds against the backdrop of a huge, and hugely inconvenient, anti-war rally that has brought much of London to a standstill.
Henry is a brilliant surgeon, a faithful husband and a loving father but he fears that his achievements and his life of privileged contentment cannot protect him from the evil that lurks without. He has a guilt-laden relationship with his mother who suffers from Alzheimer's and no longer knows who he is and a prickly one with his alcoholic poet father-in-law. There's a funny bit where Henry compares the work of a poet to "occasional labour, like grapepicking."
We follow him through his day as he runs errands, has a minor car accident, plays a very competitive game of squash with a colleague, visits his mother, cooks dinner, spends time with his family, suffers through an act of violence, performs brain surgery and reconciles the day's events in the arms of his wife. Whew! Too much happening on what is supposed to be a day off. It's not just the activity level that is daunting, it's also the range of emotions the protagonist wades through: apprehension, desire, anger, love, fear and forgiveness.Ian McEwan's post 911 novel shows us how deeply the events of Sept. 11, 2001 have altered our world view. International terrorism has become local terror.
The Matthew Arnold poem Daisy recites at the climax of the book was written in 1867 but captures the reality of Perowne's modern world:
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
I wasn't prepared to like Henry Perowne quite as much as I did but he is a strong character, one with superior intelligence and large emotional capacity and sympathetic despite his life of great privilege. I enjoyed Saturday so much that I plan to reread other McEwan novels.
Liz Dunn is a heavy, homely, lonely office worker who is on the wrong side of forty. Her job is boring, so is her condo and she is friendless to boot. She watches re-runs of Law and Order for excitement. She has personality quirks that she keeps subverted. As a young girl she found the body of a dead transvestite and, rather than being frightened or disgusted, she lifted the fellow's skirt with a stick to see what was underneath. She used to sneak into neighbours' houses when they weren't home, not to steal but to experience their lives. At sixteen she had a child. Because she was overweight no one knew she was pregnant. Even her parents only found out when she was in the throes of labour. She gave the baby up for adoption and it remained a secret she and her parents kept from everyone else, even her siblings. Her now adult son, Jeremy, enters her life in a dramatic fashion and her loneliness disappears. Others begin to see her in a different way, as someone who has a life and a past; Liz is no longer invisible.
