McEwan's Saturday.

The funniest thing just happened twelve seconds ago. I sat down here at the mega-bookstore, and this really old guy sat down across from me. He's probably a hundred. There is a partition wall between us. We are sitting at this desk-like bank of inoperative computer terminals, and I can only see the top 1/3rd of his head from here. But, when I went around to plug in the power cord for my laptop I saw that he is leafing through Ian McEwan’s Saturday, fresh-plucked from the shelves and so, I say.... “That is a great book. I just read it a while ago” and then he mutters something, he is totally flustered, and fidgets around, and he is closing the book and all.... half-getting up to leave, and he just mumbles “Yes, Yes” but even with those two repeated syllables I can hear that he has a really thick accent from somewhere... and then I realized that he probably thinks I work here (I am still in my uniform from work) and that I am suggesting that he put the unpurchased book back on the shelf, especially since I was sort of bent down plugging this computer in and all, as if I own the place.... so I said it again, in my most re-assuring voice... “It’s a great book. You’ll like it.”
“Yes, yes” he says in Jarble-ese.... and then just as I sat down again I noticed that he glanced over at me and convinced himself that I am not going to arrest him. With that, he cut back to about the middle of the book and has been reading in there ever since. So, I find that hilarious. He is doing the same thing I did in here just a while ago.... he is reading the entire book without buying it. Isn’t that wild?
We're birds of a feather all of a sudden, me and this foreign centenarian.

McEwan is definitely a writer of successful and successive masterpieces. He keeps getting better and Saturday is the best of the five McEwan books I have read thus far. It is simply amazing the sheer AMOUNT of things, incidents, that happen to Henry Perowne and his family in this one day, Saturday, February 15, 2003. Amazing, and yet so believably presented. McEwan is the consummate chronicler of incident. He kindles conflagrations from sparks, like no-one else I have ever read. His novel Enduring Love is probably the best example of the power of antecedents, but really all of his books have this trail you can follow.... this led to this, which led to that.... and WOW, what a subsequent blaze from such a small little tea-light candle of an incident. Saturday is a character-driven book. Here we find a leading man who is consistently decent without ever being a namby-pamby moralist. Here is an engaging story that abounds in optimism and resolves itself in decency without ever avoiding the ugliness and potential violence that exists in the real world. These have the capacity to change our lives in an instant. Henry, (by no means a Pollyanna-figure but rather a scientifically calculated realist when the chips are down) has to face time-and-again in this one Saturday, what it means to "do the right thing." The Perownes are perhaps the most lovable (lovely) family I have met in literature. With Saturday, I predict a second Booker Prize will come to McEwan [The Longlist will be revealed August 10th, '05]. He proves with this novel that he is a writer worthy of the Nobel.

Saturday is a fabulous book. You should buy it.
Everything I have read of this author has been exceptionally good.
I know that it is almost impossible to utter a more subjective statement than, “Such-and-such book is a good book”.... but seriously, sooner or later you are just going to have to trust me that I am a certified authority on what is good! And on what is bad. Otherwise, this blog is going to get real boring for you, day in and day out, if it hasn’t become so already!
I have read McEwan’s Black Dogs, Enduring Love, Amsterdam, Atonement, and now his latest gem, Saturday... and truly, I must conclude, you cannot go wrong, reading this authorial genius. This, this... sculptor of story.
Just quit reading this, get in your car right now, go to the store, and buy Saturday. It’s really easy.

“Yes, yes,” mumbled my reader, “And why did you yourself not buy the book Cipriano?”
You know what? I am going to go with the “temporary insanity” thing on this one.
Temporary book-driven insanity of a permanent and incurable nature.