false 5015 32 In his triumphant new novel, Ian McEwan, the bestselling author of <i>Atonement, </i>follows an ordinary man through a Saturday whose high promise gradually turns nightmarish. Henry Perowne - a neurosurgeon, urbane, privileged, deeply in love with his wife and grown-up children - plans to play a game of squash, visit his elderly mother, and cook dinner for his family. But after a minor traffic accident leads to an unsettling confrontation, Perowne must set aside his plans and summon a strength greater than he knew he had in order to preserve the life that is dear to him. 2307189 book 2005 Saturday total:8947|5:1588|4:3316|3:2698|2:979|1:366| 8947 31622 12175 1312 4 15 false false Tue Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2006 Wed Nov 14 09:52:37 -0800 2007 Wed Nov 14 10:34:21 -0800 2007
But "Saturday" is McEwan's most immediate work; the one that feels most like a significant and honest byprodu...more...]]> 2 9 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Wed Jan 16 21:11:38 -0800 2008 Sat Jan 26 08:47:40 -0800 2008 more...]]> 2 5 false false Wed Aug 06 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Wed Jul 30 09:28:31 -0700 2008 Thu Aug 07 07:32:04 -0700 2008
This book explores the events of Henry Perowne's Saturday, which I can kind of see as a metaphor for a person's life. You start out with nothing but potential, events happen, and each day ends with its own sort of oblivion - sleep.

As with Atonement, McEwa...more...]]> 4 3 false false Tue Apr 22 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Apr 28 22:17:26 -0700 2008 Mon Apr 28 22:19:56 -0700 2008 more...]]> 0 5 false true Sun Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2006 Thu Apr 17 12:29:37 -0700 2008 Wed May 13 12:34:18 -0700 2009
Each character, and each event, seems to have a massive backstory to get through before we can get back to the present moment. That got tedious fast.
...more...]]> 1 3 false false Wed Sep 12 05:26:36 -0700 2007 Thu Sep 13 07:45:24 -0700 2007
This book fell into the (2) cata...more...]]> 4 3 false false Sun Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2006 Thu Aug 14 09:39:43 -0700 2008 Thu Dec 11 10:59:51 -0800 2008 1 7 false false Sat Sep 06 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Thu Jan 15 12:27:25 -0800 2009 Tue Jan 27 09:27:08 -0800 2009
"Saturday" was ponderous, labored, rhetorically thick and therefore perhaps to my mind pretentious, or do I mean pompous? It was like a big bloated beer gut, but a beer gut bloated - indeed, rendered distended, turgid, and tumescent - by the finest chardonnays, Gewurzt...more...]]> 2 4 false false Sun Mar 30 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sun Mar 16 15:11:38 -0700 2008 Thu Apr 03 21:57:04 -0700 2008 Ulysses, that is, to detail the events of a day, in a narrative driven by a character's thoughts. Ulysses is a stream-of-consciousness masterpiece, Saturday isn't in that league. (It's probably unfair to compare a novelist with James Joyce, but li...more...]]> 4 2 false true Tue Mar 04 22:23:07 -0800 2008 Tue Mar 04 22:24:21 -0800 2008
While crowds mass in London to protest the coming invasion of Iraq in February of 2003, Henry ...more...]]> 4 4 false false Thu Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Mon Aug 06 15:17:30 -0700 2007 Thu Dec 06 13:36:40 -0800 2007 more...]]> 1 2 false false Sun Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Mon Jul 30 14:41:18 -0700 2007 Mon Jul 30 15:34:51 -0700 2007
Even though the action of the novel takes place in a day, much of the narrative exists outside of the ...more...]]> 5 1 false false Tue Dec 23 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Mon Dec 22 21:44:23 -0800 2008 Mon Dec 22 21:52:23 -0800 2008 more...]]> 2 1 false false Thu Jun 12 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Tue Jun 10 18:19:07 -0700 2008 Thu Jun 12 08:07:20 -0700 2008
The first ten pages bore...more...]]> 2 2 false false Sun Jun 08 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Fri Jun 06 11:30:41 -0700 2008 Tue Jun 10 21:15:01 -0700 2008 must read before I die. Mr. McEwan is obviously a fine writer; there is a sense of poetry to his prose, a lulling, sleep-inducing, mind-numbing sense of poetry, but a sense of poetry none...more...]]> 2 1 true true Sat Feb 23 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Mon Feb 18 06:37:57 -0800 2008 Sat Feb 23 06:47:14 -0800 2008
Update. Upon finishing this book I am not sure I understand why it got such good reviews. I was not impressed. There were s...more...]]> 3 1 true true Wed Feb 06 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Mon Jan 21 06:28:02 -0800 2008 Sun Feb 10 01:08:13 -0800 2008
The story surrounds Henry Perowne, a successful neurosurgeon. On a Saturday, when London is preparing for an anti-war demonstration (Iraq War...more...]]> 5 2 false false Sun Dec 02 20:42:01 -0800 2007 Sun Dec 02 20:42:07 -0800 2007
In the tradition of "Mrs. Dalloway," "Saturday"...more...]]> 4 1 false false Sat Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Sat Nov 24 07:42:48 -0800 2007 Sat Dec 15 10:16:52 -0800 2007
Something about this beautifully written book really spoke to me. The book's protagonist, British neurosurgeon Henry Perowne, is like many of us in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks in sensing that his life, even if personally untouched by terrorism, would never be the s...more...]]> 3 1 false false Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Sun May 27 04:37:43 -0700 2007 Fri Dec 28 18:21:16 -0800 2007 Saturday sets out to overcome the banal fact that the details of every individual's daily work, the minutiae of their job, are virtually impenetrable to anyone else - spouse, child, best-friend or co-worker. Still more difficult to convey is the interior monologue that goes with work, the thoughts a...more...]]>