My Cup Runneth Over
My cup runneth over! I have just finished - in succession - two excellent novels. This is also my second time reading Saturday by Ian McEwan and I found myself as interested as I was the first time I read it.
Saturday is the story of just one day - a day 'off' for London neurosurgeon Henry Perowne. Perowne wakes up early to the disquieting view from his window of a plane on fire coming into Heathrow Airport. Although later on we find out that this was not terrorists, the unusual happening seems to set the tone for a day of reflection about family, about limitations, strengths and weaknesses, about aging, about the state of the world. Perowne is a good man, a family man, a doctor, a saver of lives. He is limited in his knowledge of the arts and literature but his daughter Daisy, an about to be published poet, is educating him, and his son Theo, a blues musician, shares his love and passion with him. He has a loving relationship with his wife, a lawyer.
It is an "ordinary" day: Perowne plans to play a game of squash, go to the market to buy ingredients for a family supper he will make, visit his mother in a nursing home, and stop in to hear his son play. His driving around central London is disrupted by a massive anti-Iraq war demonstration and he (partly through his own lack of attention, or, perhaps, obtuseness) has a car accident involving some young toughs, one of whom has a neurological condition that, as a brain docctor, he recognizes. The accident will have unforeseen consequences, the ordinary day leading on "to a place you never dreamed of and would never choose - a knife at the throat" of your wife.
I think McEwan is a wonderful writer. He is a master of observation and research. His portrait of an Alzheimer's patient is very touching. I was struck by the line where he observes that it is important to keep photographs for "it's always useful to have solid proof that the old have had their go at being young." His details about neurosurgery are amazing. Apparently he spent months observing (his description of the doctors' change room reminded me of my studies in ethnographic observation) and the picture he creates rings true. I read that he went back to his mentor for confirmation of one detail when his book was on its way to publication; something had to be corrected in his description and he dutifully made the change. I also liked the details he shared about music, food, the house (that is apparently like his own house), literature and so on. And how wonderful that poetry (of all things) will save the day. What a touch of genius (and a coup on the part of the English literature majorMcEwan) to use Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach" as the poem and how ironic that it's author is not recognized.
Perhaps what I will mostly take from this book is a feeling of awe about the human brain - after all, to all appearances here is a kilogram or so of soft looking matter. McEwan makes us think: how can it hold thought and colour and words and sounds and memory and meaning? "Can it ever be explained how matter becomes conscious?" And can it ever be appreciated just how fragile it is - what tiny anomaly can cause Huntingdon's or Alzheimers? how even with the protection of hard skull it can be damaged? how the tiniest slip on the part of the neurosurgeon can lead to oblivion?
Saturday is the story of just one day - a day 'off' for London neurosurgeon Henry Perowne. Perowne wakes up early to the disquieting view from his window of a plane on fire coming into Heathrow Airport. Although later on we find out that this was not terrorists, the unusual happening seems to set the tone for a day of reflection about family, about limitations, strengths and weaknesses, about aging, about the state of the world. Perowne is a good man, a family man, a doctor, a saver of lives. He is limited in his knowledge of the arts and literature but his daughter Daisy, an about to be published poet, is educating him, and his son Theo, a blues musician, shares his love and passion with him. He has a loving relationship with his wife, a lawyer.
It is an "ordinary" day: Perowne plans to play a game of squash, go to the market to buy ingredients for a family supper he will make, visit his mother in a nursing home, and stop in to hear his son play. His driving around central London is disrupted by a massive anti-Iraq war demonstration and he (partly through his own lack of attention, or, perhaps, obtuseness) has a car accident involving some young toughs, one of whom has a neurological condition that, as a brain docctor, he recognizes. The accident will have unforeseen consequences, the ordinary day leading on "to a place you never dreamed of and would never choose - a knife at the throat" of your wife.
I think McEwan is a wonderful writer. He is a master of observation and research. His portrait of an Alzheimer's patient is very touching. I was struck by the line where he observes that it is important to keep photographs for "it's always useful to have solid proof that the old have had their go at being young." His details about neurosurgery are amazing. Apparently he spent months observing (his description of the doctors' change room reminded me of my studies in ethnographic observation) and the picture he creates rings true. I read that he went back to his mentor for confirmation of one detail when his book was on its way to publication; something had to be corrected in his description and he dutifully made the change. I also liked the details he shared about music, food, the house (that is apparently like his own house), literature and so on. And how wonderful that poetry (of all things) will save the day. What a touch of genius (and a coup on the part of the English literature majorMcEwan) to use Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach" as the poem and how ironic that it's author is not recognized.
Perhaps what I will mostly take from this book is a feeling of awe about the human brain - after all, to all appearances here is a kilogram or so of soft looking matter. McEwan makes us think: how can it hold thought and colour and words and sounds and memory and meaning? "Can it ever be explained how matter becomes conscious?" And can it ever be appreciated just how fragile it is - what tiny anomaly can cause Huntingdon's or Alzheimers? how even with the protection of hard skull it can be damaged? how the tiniest slip on the part of the neurosurgeon can lead to oblivion?
posted by mamie @ 12:14 PM
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