Saturday cover art

Saturday

 Preview

Get 30 days of Standard free

£5.99/mo after trial. Cancel monthly.
Try for £0.00
More purchase options

Saturday

By: Ian McEwan
Narrated by: James Wilby
Try for £0.00

£5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for £8.62

Buy Now for £8.62

Summary

Saturday, February 15, 2003. Henry Perowne is a contented man - a successful neurosurgeon, the devoted husband of Rosalind and proud father of two grown-up children. Unusually, he wakes before dawn, drawn to the window of his bedroom and filled with a growing unease. What troubles him as he looks out at the night sky is the state of the world - the impending war against Iraq, a gathering pessimism since 9/11, and a fear that his city and his happy family life are under threat.

Later, Perowne makes his way to his weekly squash game through London streets filled with hundreds of thousands of anti-war protestors. A minor car accident brings him into a confrontation with Baxter, a fidgety, aggressive, young man, on the edge of violence. To Perowne's professional eye, there appears to be something profoundly wrong with him.

Towards the end of a day rich in incident and filled with Perowne's celebrations of life's pleasures, his family gathers for a reunion. But with the sudden appearance of Baxter, Perowne's earlier fears seem about to be realised.

 Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Political Psychological World Literature War Short Story
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_c

Critic reviews

Dazzling. Profound and urgent
The supreme novelist of his generation
He remains at the top of his game - assured, accomplished and ambitious
Richly laden. McEwan pulls out all the stops. A rich book, sensuous and thoughtful. McEwan has found in Saturday the right form to showcase his dazzling talents
A book of great moral maturity, beautifully alive to the fragility of happiness and all forms of violence... Everyone should read Saturday... Artistically, morally and politically, he excels
It's the good writing and the truthful and convincing way of rendering consciousness that makes Saturday so engrossing
Saturday is wonderfully involving and affecting on every page. Everybody with any interest in contemporary literature will want to read it at once
A brilliant novel.It is McEwan writing on absolute top form
Refreshing and engrossing, dense with revelation. Superb
Written with superb exactness, complex, suspenseful and humane, this novel.reinforces his status as the supreme novelist of his generation
All stars
Most relevant
But disjointed - there were so many very long ‘capillaries’ to this story regarding the personalities and lives of his family - and I kept wanting him to get back to what the actual plot was which was really pretty lame. The descriptions of for example a squash game was brilliant but unbelievably long and frustrating.

I sought this out like many readers I suspect who had been operated on by Neil Kitchen on whom the writer shadowed for research. But I struggled to finish it.

Beautifully written

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Liked but not loved. Good book. OK narrator. I've had better. Humphrey Bower who reads Bryce Courtenay books is much better. Actors can do accents and voices better.

Good book. Good Narrator

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A masterclass in narration as near perfect as I have heard. Fantastic novel brilliant examination of the minute details of a day.

Flawless narration by James Wilby

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
As with much of the other reviews, I will note that this book doesn’t have much of a plot and doesn’t really go anywhere. It follows a man’s day from start to finish, expanding on various aspects of his day with anecdotes and thoughts back into the past. It is a pleasurable listen whilst doing something such as cleaning as it doesn’t require too much concentration. That said, the detail with which particular elements of the story are described is good. Overall a very decent listen and glad I decided to give it a go after being hesitant initially

Goes nowhere but a thoroughly enjoyable listen

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Not my kind of story. But I thought the narrative was excellent.
A bit boring but the ideas and thoughts of one man. On a Saturday that culminates in an event.

Not a story but a diary

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews