Saturday

Title: Saturday
Author: Ian McEwan
Genre: Modern Fiction
Pages: 304
Rating (out of 5 stars): ****
Reviewed by: Ben
Description: Saturday tells the story of a single day in the life of Henry Perowne, a neurosurgeon who lives in London.  It is a Saturday in February of 2003, and Henry wakes up to see a place with its wing on fire streaking towards Heathrow.  Henry's first thought is terrorism, and although it turns out he was mistaken (it was just an accident), terrorism and threats from unknown persons continue to haunt him throughout his day.
Thoughts: First off, you have to admire McEwan's prose.  Aside from any messages or deep thoughts that one might get from Saturday, I thoroughly enjoyed the great descriptions of everyday events, of situations I find myself in all the time.  And, to be sure, Saturday is filled with a lot of description and detail.  The plot doesn't unfold very quickly at all, so you've got to enjoy the prose if you're going to enjoy the book.  As for the plot itself, it was fine but nothing spectacular.  I felt like things got tied up a bit too neatly in the end (don't want to give any spoilers) for my taste.  However, the book did an excellent job of being a vehicle for thinking about terrorism, clashes of cultures, and more generally, how we handle situations and people that we are unfamiliar (and probably uncomfortable) with.  The book allows you to think about this on many different scales: terrorists (macro), muggers (mezzo), and within your own family (micro).  That is what made the book worth reading for me.
Disclaimer: There is plenty of swearing in the book, and some love-making between the main character and his wife.