saturday

Saturday by Ian McEwan

I loved Amsterdam, I adored Atonement, and Saturday is ok.

I read for entertainment. I read to get lost in a world. I like confrontation, I like movement. I don't read to improve myself. If I learn something, if become wiser, if I am a better person for having read a book, that's just a thrown in bonus. I read because I like reading, because I like to get lost, because I enjoy being entertained. And my entertainment can come in many different ways. There was a period in my life when I loved science fiction, there was a time when I read dwarves and elves, I went through an historical phase, I've even hit the biography section hard. But, in every case, I read because I want to turn the next page.

There are moments in Saturday that made me groan, mentally and physically. I just didn't want to read the next three pages. Mr McEwan is a very good writer. He researches his work well, he leaves no stone unturned. At one point, in Atonement, he describes the same scene three different ways. In Saturday he takes six pages to describe a squash game. Three pages to describe the protagonist's feelings about his car. At one point, the hero of the story stops at a traffic light and glances across at a mute television that sits in a shop window. The face on the screen is Tony Blair's. The shot on the screen moves towards Mr. Blair's lips and suddenly the reader is plunged into the research done on how to tell if someone is lying. This then leads to a story about a chance encounter with Mr. Blair. The aside last four pages. Now, normally I can read through aisides (or purple patches) if there is some sort of pay-off at the end. The payoff in Atonement is immense. Amsterdam's is awesome. Saturday's is...ok.

I've read it. I finished it. I'm glad that I've read it but I won't recommend it. Read Atonement.

Comments

[(S)wine]

(You're gonna hate me for this)I must disagree with you on "Atonement." I found it long, boring, and in many places cliche. I think it's time to see a different spin on un-requited love. In the film/screen version, I actually had to turn on subtitles as Keira Knightley's quick bursts of speech made it impossible for me to bloody understand what in hell she was saying. Also in the film version, on the soundtrack, the dramatic music with the typewriter key strokes on beat was quite innovative the first time, but the last 258 times got a bit boring. But this is the beauty of art, isn't it? How it appeals to some, doesn't to others?

On another note, Isee you're reading Sedaris' new one. Might we get a review on that one when you're finished? Thanks.

[will]

Nope, no hatred here :^)

I liked it, you didn't - fair enough. However, I think I hated the film more than you :^p I can't remember anything about it at all, having purged it from my brain.

The Sedaris book is sat beside my bed. I am dipping into it, reading the odd chapter if I get bored with the book I'm reading. A review will follow when it is finished.

[Three-Legged-Cat]

I wasn't mad about Saturday either, it wasn't bad but it was all a bit... plodding I suppose. I thought it could have made a decent short story, but I didn't have any interest in the dull minutae of someone else's day, however clever the idea of telling the story that way might (or might not) be. Plus I thought the ending was ridiculous.

Saturday was the first Ian McEwan book I have read, but it didn't leave me with any enthusiasm to read any more, so it might just be the last as well.

[Vanessa]

Nooooo - McEwan is an unstable genius who can't write endings. Don't take one book by him to be representative of the others, and it's generally better to stop at the penultimate chapter and imagine your own ending. Patchy though he is - and he can be awful - he is a genius, and can write some amazing books. Don't take one as representative, please!