 | A WRITER'S WIT |  M. Nava |
MY BOOK WORLD
McEwan, Ian. Saturday. New York: Doubleday, 2006.
McEwan always places his characters in such precarious but interesting situations. In this novel, an eminent London surgeon witnesses a plane crashing at Heathrow airport—out his bedroom window—early one Saturday morning. He immediately prepares himself to leave the house; he will be needed to help clean up the carnage. At first, one thinks that this event is the inciting event of the novel. It is not, merely foreshadowing (the plane, piloted by two Russians, crashes in foam, and all survive). Later in the morning, the surgeon finds that a street has been blocked off, but he ignores the police and drives to his destination in his expensive Mercedes. There he is sideswiped by a cad and his two buddies, who try to hold him up for damages (a lopped-off side mirror), but it is the cad who has initiated the accident, and so the surgeon refuses, suffering a punch in the chest for his trouble. He notices the cad’s physical characteristics and determines that the man has (what will turn out to be) Huntington’s disease. His conference with the cad softens the young man, and they part. But one realizes, like the proverbial bad penny, the three cads are to surface again. I won’t spoil the ending. I will say that McEwan turns what could have been a maudlin conclusion into one that is both realistic and satisfying literarily. No one character gets off too easily, nor does one suffer too much. A lot like real life for most of us.
Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Ellen Gilchrist
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Erma Bombeck
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Kimball Allen
FRI: My Book World | Matthew Stadler, The Sex Offender
McEwan always places his characters in such precarious but interesting situations. In this novel, an eminent London surgeon witnesses a plane crashing at Heathrow airport—out his bedroom window—early one Saturday morning. He immediately prepares himself to leave the house; he will be needed to help clean up the carnage. At first, one thinks that this event is the inciting event of the novel. It is not, merely foreshadowing (the plane, piloted by two Russians, crashes in foam, and all survive). Later in the morning, the surgeon finds that a street has been blocked off, but he ignores the police and drives to his destination in his expensive Mercedes. There he is sideswiped by a cad and his two buddies, who try to hold him up for damages (a lopped-off side mirror), but it is the cad who has initiated the accident, and so the surgeon refuses, suffering a punch in the chest for his trouble. He notices the cad’s physical characteristics and determines that the man has (what will turn out to be) Huntington’s disease. His conference with the cad softens the young man, and they part. But one realizes, like the proverbial bad penny, the three cads are to surface again. I won’t spoil the ending. I will say that McEwan turns what could have been a maudlin conclusion into one that is both realistic and satisfying literarily. No one character gets off too easily, nor does one suffer too much. A lot like real life for most of us.
Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Ellen Gilchrist
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Erma Bombeck
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Kimball Allen
FRI: My Book World | Matthew Stadler, The Sex Offender
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