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Saturday

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Saturday

By: Ian McEwan
Narrated by: James Wilby
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About this listen

Saturday, February 15, 2003. Henry Perowne is a contented man - a successful neurosurgeon, the devoted husband of Rosalind and proud father of two grown-up children. Unusually, he wakes before dawn, drawn to the window of his bedroom and filled with a growing unease. What troubles him as he looks out at the night sky is the state of the world - the impending war against Iraq, a gathering pessimism since 9/11, and a fear that his city and his happy family life are under threat.

Later, Perowne makes his way to his weekly squash game through London streets filled with hundreds of thousands of anti-war protestors. A minor car accident brings him into a confrontation with Baxter, a fidgety, aggressive, young man, on the edge of violence. To Perowne's professional eye, there appears to be something profoundly wrong with him.

Towards the end of a day rich in incident and filled with Perowne's celebrations of life's pleasures, his family gathers for a reunion. But with the sudden appearance of Baxter, Perowne's earlier fears seem about to be realised.

 Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Political Psychological World Literature War Short Story

Critic reviews

Dazzling. Profound and urgent
The supreme novelist of his generation
He remains at the top of his game - assured, accomplished and ambitious
Richly laden. McEwan pulls out all the stops. A rich book, sensuous and thoughtful. McEwan has found in Saturday the right form to showcase his dazzling talents
A book of great moral maturity, beautifully alive to the fragility of happiness and all forms of violence... Everyone should read Saturday... Artistically, morally and politically, he excels
It's the good writing and the truthful and convincing way of rendering consciousness that makes Saturday so engrossing
Saturday is wonderfully involving and affecting on every page. Everybody with any interest in contemporary literature will want to read it at once
A brilliant novel.It is McEwan writing on absolute top form
Refreshing and engrossing, dense with revelation. Superb
Written with superb exactness, complex, suspenseful and humane, this novel.reinforces his status as the supreme novelist of his generation
All stars
Most relevant
Liked but not loved. Good book. OK narrator. I've had better. Humphrey Bower who reads Bryce Courtenay books is much better. Actors can do accents and voices better.

Good book. Good Narrator

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But disjointed - there were so many very long ‘capillaries’ to this story regarding the personalities and lives of his family - and I kept wanting him to get back to what the actual plot was which was really pretty lame. The descriptions of for example a squash game was brilliant but unbelievably long and frustrating.

I sought this out like many readers I suspect who had been operated on by Neil Kitchen on whom the writer shadowed for research. But I struggled to finish it.

Beautifully written

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Excellent narration, slightly cliched with the voices of the crooks, but well suited to the protagonist and narrator. The story is a formidable exercise in stream of consciousness, and will thrill any reader of Joyce who enjoys contemporary literature

A formidable exercise in stream of consciousness

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Brilliant written and thought provoking with back drop of Iraqi war. An amazing insight into the work of a neurologist.

Wonderful

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Ian McEwan always delivers a good story, this is definitely a good story. The narrator is easy to listen to. Not always the case I find.
Enjoyed it very much.

A good book

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