32. Saturday McEwan

Ian McEwan is an author I have put of reading for a number of years now, so naturally with having four or five of his books on my shelf I felt that I had to include him in my 50 books.

There was a reason I had never read him before.

When an author is put forward as the greatest writer alive today, I am always slightly sceptical. Who judges who the greatest writer is? And perhaps more importantly what do they look for in their judgement? For McEwan I can only assume he is sleeping with the judges... or competitive writing is something that I have no knowledge of.

The premise of Saturday, reminds me a lot of a Sunday Times Magazine feature that I remember having to do an example of in school, whereby you write about your day and in doing so tell the reader about your life through that. It was probably one of the most memorable tasks I had to do in high school English - along with highlighting the whole of Lord of the Flies - and I remember distinctly trying to make myself sound incredibly intelligent and worldly, and in actual fact made myself sound like a plonker... Which is exactly what McEwan manages here.

To try to break it down further I suppose I have two problems.

The first one is the writing style. McEwan has written this novel like it is a stream of conscious-ness. While trying to elucidate the main protagonist's thoughts it reminds me far too much of my own attempt at "A Day in the Life..." At no point does the main character have any thought that may not appear to be carefully chosen, and this really, really bugs me! I know I am not the smartest person in the world, but as a fairly intelligent person I know there are times in my day when I just talk/think absolute shit, and at others where I think nothing at all! Why does McEwan feel the need to make his character always have such clever, clever thoughts??

The second problem is an issue I have with a lot of books. I like books that pull me along with them, that refuse to let me put them down, and that I start to feel for/love/long to be the characters within it. In Saturday there is just a real lack of suspense. Even when the evil nasty baddie turns up at the house and does horrible nasty things to the family, I'm neither enthralled nor anxious... I'm just ambivalent. The scene at the hospital at the end just makes me confused and its not because the thoughts of the character are particularly complex, its just that McEwan has forgotten in amongst all his "clever-writing" to actual try and develop any relationships between the characters.

I think you may have gathered if you have read this far that this will not be appearing at the top of my recommended books list and you would be right! I think however I may persevere with McEwan and try another at some point... everyone can have an off day after all.