Saturday

SATURDAY: Ian McEwan: Doubleday: fiction: 289 pages

Almost 150 years ago, Charles Dickens penned the line, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” In our era, another of Britain’s great writers, Ian McEwan, depicts much the same sentiment through the ruminations of a modern Londoner, Henry Perowne, as we follow him through a single day.

In the “best of times” category, Henry is an accomplished neurosurgeon, who lives in a palatial London townhouse with a successful attorney wife whom he still adores after a quarter century of marriage. Their two children are thriving in artistic lives of their own; one as a blues musician, the other as a published poet. In addition, as Henry muses on this particular Saturday morning, the teapot has reached the “peak of refinement.”

In the “worst of times” category, Henry’s day begins with a plane crash (observed at a distance from his bedroom window) that taints the rest of his day with a post 9/11 sense of foreboding and anxiety. This sense is accentuated by the millions of protesters gathered in London that day to protest the impending Iraq war, a war that Henry uncomfortably approves of. The protest indirectly causes a minor traffic accident with a mentally unstable street thug that keeps Henry looking over his shoulder as he completes his errands around the city. A late afternoon visit to his senile mother reminds Henry of his own mortality and his frustrating ability to repair the brain but not the mind.

The best and worst of times converge later that evening, when Henry wrapped in the glow of a genial family reunion, relaxes into an aura of warm contentment. And then… the worst walks right through his front door.

This well written story moves along on a stream of thoughtful contemplations that reflect the complex and contradicting themes of the age we live in: war and peace, justice and forgiveness, religion and modern medicine, and still manages an optimistic note. For as Henry recognizes that fateful morning about his amazing teapot, “The world should take note: not everything is getting worse.”

LG