Thursday, September 08, 2005
"Saturday" by Ian McEwan
While reading "Saturday" by Ian McEwan, I noticed how authentically and realistically McEwan shows the thought process of typical people. The narrator, Henry Perowne, goes in and out of ideas and thoughts rapidly, in a very nonlinear and uncoordinated fashion. For example, Perowne begins by looking out his window, and his thoughts digress to his week, identifying each of the surgeries that he had performed this week, including those which were passed on to him after the flu outbreak. And from his list he once again digresses into the back story of fourteen-year-old Andrea Chapman, the Nigerian girl who had a tumor removed from the back of her head.
I found this to be an accurate and believable way of detailing the casual thoughts of our narrator. Like Perowne, most people, including myself, do not go through thoughts in a coherent and orderly manner. Our thoughts move about much more quickly. We, like Perowne, are prone to tangents, often upon tangents, in non-cohesive patterns. Perowne’s thoughts are not presented as if he was narrating a book. Rather, they are presented as if he is narrating his own life. In this way Henry Perowne is more plausible as a narrator, though this does not make him more reliable.
Unfortunately, the very fact that makes this book feel more natural and realistic is also what makes it both less appealing and harder to read. As I stated earlier, feel less as if he is narrating a book and more as if he is narrating his life. Since his mind moves quickly from topic to topic, he provides the reader with more inner monologue to read. This amounts to exhaustingly long passages of seemingly mundane details of his thoughts. The book spends so much time in Perowne’s head as he delves through an extensive list of surgeries performed, his first meeting with his wife, interactions with fellow doctors, etc., that it becomes easy to lose track of where we are in the present day narrative. Take, for instance, the moments after Perowne’s car is in an accident on the closed-off road during the protests. He states on page 83 that he has only taken a "half-minute’s pause," yet that half of a minute takes nearly two pages to summarize. In this time, he goes through the number of everyday accidents during which he has had to spontaneously serve as doctor, the noises of the car post-accident, his unseen prediction of the damage inflicted to his car, and his anger at the other driver involved, among many other things. Granted, all of this is completely a understandable and relatable reaction to a car accident. However, this does not make the two pages any shorter or easier to read through. Until I found out this all took place in about 30 seconds, I found myself wondering just how long Perowne had planned on sitting in his car before finally getting out. In scenes like this, the more Perowne gets sidetracked, the harder he is to follow, despite McEwan’s intelligent use of said sidetracks.
I found this to be an accurate and believable way of detailing the casual thoughts of our narrator. Like Perowne, most people, including myself, do not go through thoughts in a coherent and orderly manner. Our thoughts move about much more quickly. We, like Perowne, are prone to tangents, often upon tangents, in non-cohesive patterns. Perowne’s thoughts are not presented as if he was narrating a book. Rather, they are presented as if he is narrating his own life. In this way Henry Perowne is more plausible as a narrator, though this does not make him more reliable.
Unfortunately, the very fact that makes this book feel more natural and realistic is also what makes it both less appealing and harder to read. As I stated earlier, feel less as if he is narrating a book and more as if he is narrating his life. Since his mind moves quickly from topic to topic, he provides the reader with more inner monologue to read. This amounts to exhaustingly long passages of seemingly mundane details of his thoughts. The book spends so much time in Perowne’s head as he delves through an extensive list of surgeries performed, his first meeting with his wife, interactions with fellow doctors, etc., that it becomes easy to lose track of where we are in the present day narrative. Take, for instance, the moments after Perowne’s car is in an accident on the closed-off road during the protests. He states on page 83 that he has only taken a "half-minute’s pause," yet that half of a minute takes nearly two pages to summarize. In this time, he goes through the number of everyday accidents during which he has had to spontaneously serve as doctor, the noises of the car post-accident, his unseen prediction of the damage inflicted to his car, and his anger at the other driver involved, among many other things. Granted, all of this is completely a understandable and relatable reaction to a car accident. However, this does not make the two pages any shorter or easier to read through. Until I found out this all took place in about 30 seconds, I found myself wondering just how long Perowne had planned on sitting in his car before finally getting out. In scenes like this, the more Perowne gets sidetracked, the harder he is to follow, despite McEwan’s intelligent use of said sidetracks.
# posted by Kevin5671 @ 10:54 AM 
