Saturday

You don't read Ian McEwan, or at least, you don't read Ian McEwan's Saturday, for it's fast-paced, non-stop action filled scenes. Indeed, this book spends much of the time inside it's own head, or at least, the main character's head. Saturday takes place on one day in February 2003, in London. The morning starts off with Henry Perowne witnessing a near catastrophe and slowly, very slowly, ravels and unravels from there.

That's not to say that this book is boring. There are some slow moments but the book is written very gracefully and there are both lovely and nail-biting moments. The climax of the novel almost comes without warning.

My favorite passage:

No longer tired, Henry comes away from the wall where he's been leaning, and walks into the middle of the dark auditorium, towards the great engine of sound. He lets it engulf him. There are these rare moments when musicians together touch something sweeter than they've ever found before in rehearsals or performance, beyond the merely collaborative or technically proficient, when their expression becomes as easy and graceful as friendship or love. This is when they give us a glimpse of what we might be, of our best selves, and of an impossible world in which you give everything you have to others, but lose nothing of yourself. Out in the real world there exist detailed plans, visionary projects for peaceable realms, all conflicts resolved, happiness for everyone, for ever - mirages for which people are prepared to die and kill. Christ's kingdom on earth, the workers' paradise, the ideal Islamic state. But only in music, and only on rare occasions, does the curtain actually lift on this dream of community, and it's tantalisingly conjured, before fading away with the last notes.