Contemporary Reads: Saturday

Ian MacEwan's latest novel Saturday takes place on February 15, 2003. Much like James Joyce's Leopold Bloom in Ulysses or Virgina Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, we follow Henry Perowne's train of thought and actions for a single day.

Unable to sleep neurosurgeon Perowne gets out of bed in the wee hours of Saturday morning. When he sees a plane in flames coming down on Heathrow airport, he fears the worse - a terrorist attack. However, he finds out this is not the case as he catches glimpes of the TV news throughout the day.

On his way to a squash game, he is involved in a minor car accident with three men coming out of a famous strip club. Attacked by their ringleader, Baxter, Perowne suspects this shady character is affected by some rare neurological desease and gives him an impromptu diagnosis and mentions a possible experimental cure for it. This unsettles Baxter, who we learn is bound to mood wings due to his condition, and Perowne manages to flee the scene. He makes his way to the gym through the masses of anti Iraq was protesters in Central London.

After been beaten up on the squash game he goes to visit her demented mother in the home she lives in. He goes home and then out again to his son's Theo's blues band rehearsal in Notting Hill.

When he gets home, his daughter, Daisy - an about-to-be-published poet who lives in Paris - arrives home after many months absence. Soon, the reast of the family: Perowne's father-in-law, the celebrate poet John Grammaticus; his wife Rosalind, the talented lawyer; and his son Theo back from his rehearsal. Only that holding a knife to Rosalind, Baxter, forces his way into the house accompanied by one of his friends, Nigel. He has come to take revenge for his humiliation that morning.

In a scene of high tension, Baxter and his ally keep the whole family hostage in their living room. Baxter makes Daisy take off all her clothes which reveals her pregnancy unbeknown to the family until then. When Baxter discovers that she is a poet by seeing the proof of her books, he makes her read out loud one of her poems. However, she justs recites an old poem her gradfather taught her in her childhood. Baxter is moved by the poem and after a few reprises asks Daisy to get dressed and tells Perowne that he wants to learn more about the cure for his illness. When Baxter and Perowne makes it upstairs to find the information about the cure the doctor bluffed about, Nigel flees the scene leaving the rest of the family alone. Theo runs upstairs and him and Perowne managed to overpower Baxter and throw him down the stairs. This the end of the nightmare.

Later on that evening, Perowne is called to hospital to operate on Baxter. The novel ends early on Sunday morning with Perowne falling asleep in bed with Rosalind.

Like it's predecessor Atonement, this novel is one of great substance which is also immensely readable.

Other books I have read by this author: Atonement.