Henry Perowne’s Saturday starts early when,
waking in the small hours, he sees from his bedroom window an aeroplane on fire
heading for an emergency landing at Heathrow. It could be a portent that his
day off from his neurological surgeon duties will be eventful, and not just
because of the family reunion dinner planned for the evening.
As we follow him through his Saturday
morning rituals we also share his thoughts on life, his work, world events (as
he muses on the news reports) and on preparations for the arrival of his
daughter and father in law. This also fills in some of the family history, which
apart from its gently upward trajectory is remarkable only for its relative
lack of remarkability to date.
But drama lies in waiting for a man who
appears to have everything – loving wife, children on the brink of successful
transition to adulthood, a fulfilling well paid career, a fashionable London address
and even a top of the range Mercedes.
It is when the Mercedes is bumped by a red
BMW with dark tinted windows that the fragility of such a lifestyle begins to
get exposed. This won’t be sorted out by exchanging insurance details.
The rest of the day is coloured by the
incident and its potential effect. The backdrop of an anti-war demonstration in
the neighbouring streets also brings to mind the external threats to his
comfortable existence, for which he is appreciative but not complacent.
McEwan’s prose is dense and can look
off-putting but reads as smooth as silk. Details of thoughts, emotions and
events cram into moments of time; it takes five pages to cover a game of squash
or perform a neurological procedure. The technicalities of one of these I can
understand fully, of the other I have no idea, but both hold the interest
equally firmly.
How the day progresses and concludes is well
worth finding out. Does the burning plane land safely or are there casualties?
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