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| Saturday | 
 enlarge | Author: Ian Mcewan
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
Buy Used: £0.01
You Save: £7.98 (100%)
New (33) Collectible (3) from £1.50
Avg. Customer Rating:  156 reviews
Sales Rank: 2020
Media: Paperback
Edition: New Ed
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5.1 x 0.8
ISBN: 0099469685
EAN: 9780099469681
ASIN: 0099469685
Publication Date: December 17, 2005
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: SUPER FAST SHIPPING, DISPATCHED SAME DAY FROM UK WAREHOUSE. NO NEED TO WAIT FOR BOOKS FROM USA. GREAT BOOK IN GOOD OR BETTER CONDITION. MORE GREAT BARGAINS IN OUR ZSHOP. amazon.co.uk/shops/awesome_books_001
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| Customer Reviews:
 Excruciating July 24, 2008
I have read McEwan before, and I love the way he writes....Sunday through Friday! Saturday was hard for me to get through. He used excruciating detail, and the book just dragged. I decided to quit in the middle, but I hate to leave a book unfinished, so I forced myself to read to the end. Sorry, it just wasn't his best.
 Saturday - Ian McEwan July 19, 2008
Before seeing what other reviewers have written about this book, i thought i may be alone in thinking that this book is surely one of the most pretentious and not to mention laborious i have ever laid hands on. Apparently not.
The akward surgeon Perowne has stayed with me long after putting this book to bed, not because his exploits kept me riveted, but because of the amount of time and effort i ploughed into finishing this book.
I found the characters hard to get along with and i had little, if any sympathy for anything that they suffered, and, again, as mentioned by another reviewer, some moments are so pretentious (need i mention reciting dover beach to your attacker) they become laughable. The environment and people that Mcewan has created in this book seem to be a world away, behind the thick screen of London's elite upper middle class. This makes them hard to identify with for most of us, and makes the book even harder to stomach.
Although i seem to have poured scorn upon this title, it does have one or two redeeming features. The atmosphere captured with the crowds rallying in the heart of london is truly vivid, this however, is not enough to save this book from a serious case of self impotant failiure.
 A Riveting Read July 15, 2008
Having just been lent a copy of Ian McEwan's more recent novel On Chesil Beach I decided that I should read Saturday first, as the copy my husband read was on our bookshelves. I have previously read and enjoyed, The Cement Garden, Enduring Love, Amsterdam and Atonement. The latter is still my favourite, although I highly recommend Saturday as a thought provoking read.
Saturday as the title suggests covers just one day, February 15th 2003 in the life of modern day Londoner Henry Perowne. A successful neurosurgeon living a comfortable middle class existence, happily married to Rosalind, a lawyer and two grown-up children Daisy a poet and Theo a musician. His day starts as he watches the dawn from his bedroom window and events as the day progresses cause him to examine his life and beliefs in detail. In fact detail to the extreme is something this story is full of along with lots of literary and musical references. The detail McEwan goes into on subjects as diverse as brain surgery and a squash match are riveting. The brain surgery details made me feel uncomfortable, as for the squash match I felt I was playing the game myself. He writes in such a realistic manner, the fifties housewives cleanliness and the old peoples homes descriptions were also parts where I actually felt I was there, memories of my own may be?
The story builds slowly to its dramatic climax with Henry spending his Saturday preparing for a family gathering. On the day the streets of London were filled with hundreds of thousands of anti-war protestors, which seemed to have a disconnected effect on everything that happened to Henry that day
I enjoyed this so much that I am going to start On Chesil Beach straight away!
Simply fantastic June 10, 2008
If you like to race through books that have explosive plots which twist and unravel themselves at a breathtaking pace... then this probably isn't for you.
Instead this is a richly detailed and analytical book which deserves to be read slowly, while contemplating the subtle points the author makes. The reviewers who have said they gave up as the book was 'boring' have completely missed the point. It's the incidental casual lines and phrases, irrelevant to the overall plot, which reveal the most about the main protagonist and his take on the world.
By involving the reader so deeply with Perowne's thoughts and feelings, I could hardly bear to read at the point when his family is in danger. Of course, the people who say they 'skimmed over' large parts will probably have arrived at this section lacking any empathy with the situation he is facing, but hey, that's their problem. I thought this book was fantastic.
 mostly gripping, sometimes puzzling June 8, 2008
I quite enjoyed this, because it gives us a lot to think about. But, as with several of McEwan's novels, it's a little bit patchy in parts. Take the family re-union - with Theo, Henry's blues guitar son, daughter Daisy the poet returning from Paris, John Grammatic, his poet father-in-law, and Rosalind, his wife - disturbed by madman Baxter and his mate, with a knife-threatening attack. This section is gripping.
But 2-3 hrs after, in the same evening/night, would Henry (the neurosurgeon) really get a call to cover in hospital on the same victim (Baxter) who he's just thrown down his own staircase?
Overall, though, this book infiltrates our consciousness with a precise, yet risky, combination of scalpel and pen.
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