Saturday, Ian McEwan (Random House, Inc.; Anchor Books, 2005)

A wonderful novel, about one day in the life of an English neurosurgeon, Henry Perowne. He gets up on Saturday morning, looking forward to his weekly game of squash, to visiting his elderly mother, to welcoming home his adult daughter, Daisy, who has been living in France, and to a family dinner with Daisy, his wife, Rosalind, his son Theo, and his father-in-law, John Grammaticus, a curmudgeonly poet.

But it doesn’t turn out anything like he expected. On the way to his squash match he is confronted with a huge rally against the impending Iraq war; in trying to drive away from the crowds he clips the side mirror from a BMW that is trying to squeeze down the same small street. Unfortunately, the driver of the BMW is a street criminal and has two buddies with him. Henry manages to get away from their confrontation by noticing that Baxter, the other driver, has a neurological disorder that causes mood swings and will soon be fatal. Henry reveals to Baxter that he is a neurosurgeon and may be able to help him, which isn’t quite true but it works.

However, later in the day, Baxter and one of his henchmen surprise the Perownes by crashing their dinner party and taking them hostage in their own home. With a knife at Rosalind’s throat, Baxter orders Daisy to disrobe, which she does (incidentally confirming what Henry may have suspected, that she is pregnant), but Baxter is thwarted again, this time by Daisy reading a poem by Matthew Arnold, “Dover Beach,” which somehow touches him and gives Henry and Theo a chance to overpower him. They throw him down the stairs, giving him a serious head injury. And then Henry is called in to operate on him. He could have turned it down, and let an associate, perform the surgery, but Henry wants to do it ... although it’s not clear at this point why. Not only does he successfully operate; he also does not want Baxter prosecuted.

Later we learn that Henry has been reflecting on his own mortality and sees that harming Baxter will really do nothing good, especially since he has only a little while to live, and not a very happy life ahead of him. In that sense, saving his life through surgery may even have been a kind of revenge.

Early in the novel, shortly after Daily arrives, she and her father get into an argument about the Iraq war (pp. 190-199), culminating in a friendly wager about the outcome, in which Daisy’s prediction of chaos and ongoing violence turns out to be the correct one (p. 198).

What’s the significance of this novel? At many points Henry reveals that he is an atheist; he also has a very factual, scientific mind. He can’t get the hang of poetry, and although Daisy is always urging him to read good books, he only reads the factual ones and has never finished a fantasy or other novel with unrealistic features. Are these things connected? Is the author saying that only a poetical mind can experience religious faith? Maybe not; neither Daisy nor John Grammaticus seem to be believers.

Overall, I enjoyed the book because it is so well written and I found it engrossing. But I also found it a bit depressing. There does not seem to be any kind of hope in this book, for individuals or the world in general. It’s almost as if the author is saying, all that exists is this material world, and we are all part of it and therefore doomed to decay and die. Not very encouraging.