It felt like I spent days on the squash match alone

LOL. Quite.

Maybe his next book'll be called 'Watching Paint Dry'....

Deb

Stop it Deb I've started reading it in my head now. It's interminable.

I just hope that no-one he knows is in WW to tell him the awful things we're saying...

Deb

A friend of mine, who shares this view, actually met him recently in a professional capacity. I dared her to say it! She chickened out though!

LOL. That'd be an awkward conversation. And I'm sure he's very nice. And enjoys squash.

Deb

Hi CarolineSG,
Very scathing - poor McEwan. His greatest appeal/following seems to be from women born during the wartime or slightly after especially if they are middle class. I guess you are not one of these.
Charlev

Charlev
I'm sure he can cope...

Oh - ok, I quite liked Saturday from an academic point of view - interesting observations and, as always, lovely prose BUT as a story, not really that gripping...too close to his own lifestyle probably and couldn't quite make that leap to a good story. Atonement I just loved and it made me cry, made me angry, really got the core of a terrible dilemma. But Chesil Beach... hmmm...again nicely done but I agree, not a great story... he could have gone so much further and it did feel incredibly dated... perhaps that's where he's been clever, taking us back to the era in which it was written, but I just didn't really care... and I read books to care.

Oh - ok, I quite liked Saturday from an academic point of view - interesting observations and, as always, lovely prose BUT as a story, not really that gripping...too close to his own lifestyle probably and couldn't quite make that leap to a good story. Atonement I just loved and it made me cry, made me angry, really got the core of a terrible dilemma. But Chesil Beach... hmmm...again nicely done but I agree, not a great story... he could have gone so much further and it did feel incredibly dated... perhaps that's where he's been clever, taking us back to the era in which it was written, but I just didn't really care... and I read books to care.

I probably should have said at the onset that I was always a big fan until Saturday. A Child in Time is one of the most powerful books I've ever read and I loved Comfort of Strangers, Atonement..and er, can't remember any others now! Just think he has started to rest on his literary laurels, so to speak. I really don't think I'd buy another, unless the plot sounded genuinely fascinating.

Sarah, I'm curious about what you mean by 'from an academic POV' wrt 'Saturday'. Yes, I agree his prose is well-crafted and in many places a pleasure to read, but I still feel a novel should have some plot. To me he did half the job only, which isn't enough. I didn't think the characterisation (apart from of the viewpoint character) was that strong either.

Deb

I felt he'd done an enormous amount of research into the medical areas; behaviour of criminals etc... but this wasn't translated well into the emotional reality of his fiction. He seemed to be somehow removed and a little too objective... though undoubtedly clever. I thought the best section was when he visited his mother in the home - the traffic and lights, the teabag (was it a teabag? - a long time since I've read it now). Not sure if I'm making any sense here.

But I'm also wondering now if the whole point was to be clinical, looking in on the life of a man who, by his profession has reduced everything to the components of life, rather than seeing and 'feeling' the whole, as if he's become an external observor of everything that matters... that that was the 'problem' with the narrator, who has to face these dramatic events to try and bring himself back in line with the basics of family life, as well as facing his own mortality. I'm not saying it worked... but I think that may be why the author took the tone that he did.

No-one else find it odd that the main character's wife (Henry someone, I think, from Saturday) was dying for sex both morning and evening of what must have been a very stressful day for her?

Lady B

Yes, I thought that whole scene was ludicrous!

Glad to know it wasn't just me then. When I started ranting about it to t'other half he did look a wee bit puzzled

Lady B