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Date Posted: 16:16:58 01/19/08 Sat
Author: Chris
Subject: Re: Saturday
In reply to: Charlotte 's message, "Saturday" on 09:19:31 01/06/08 Sun

What is unusual about the structure of Ian McEwan’s “Saturday” and how does this, coupled with tension, engage the interest of the reader?


Constantly building up to a climax, then drifting off into some part of the past, surely this would strongly deter the reader? No. With “Saturday” only being structured around twenty-four hours, McEwan does not have a lot of time for plot to develop, instead he gathers tension and then breaks off into the memories and thoughts of Henry Perowne, the protagonist, creating an anti climax, which urges the reader to continue. By using neurosurgical terms almost as if he expects the reader to understand them, McEwan further engages the appreciation and interest of the reader.
The fact Perowne is a highly successful neurosurgeon adds irony to McEwan writing “Saturday” in first person context. The reader really gets into the mind of Henry Perowne, and the constant fluctuation between present events and memories, further makes the reader feel part of Perowne’s frontal lobe. It is this becoming of the main character that grips the reader.
Towards the end of the twenty four hour day-in-the-life, the reader finds themselves in the Perowne household, in the middle of an intrusion by Nigel and Baxter. With Baxter’s knife threatening the flesh of her mother’s throat, Daisy obliges to undress for Nigel and Baxter, and with the reader expecting the nowadays-common worst, Perowne slips into unconscious thought and remembers Daisy as a child:
“Head bowed, Daisy stands with her hands at her sides, unable to look at anyone.
Perowne hasn’t seen his daughter naked in more than twelve years…he remembers this body from bath times…”
This anti-climax makes the reader almost want to rush through the coming sentences, past Henry Perowne’s thoughts and memories, to find out what Baxter will do to Daisy.
After the slow start to the novel, the reader staggers over the first climax in the twenty-four-hour saga. Cruising along in his, model S500 Mercedes to a regular squash game, Perowne makes his way down a narrow road and has a scrape with a series 5 BMW. The car accident coupled with McEwan’s listing and word choice raises the tension and McEwan ingeniously uses these two rivals of car manufacture to indicate a forthcoming clash between their drivers: Henry Perowne in the Mercedes corner and, unknown yet to the reader, Baxter in the BMW corner. Just like an advert interrupting a key scene on a Friday night soap, McEwan interrupts the climax by retreating into Perowne’s thoughts about insurance costs and the fact his beloved S500 will never have its original perfection. Perhaps he should be more concerned about the immediate damage and who’s in the BMW…
“…the snap of a wing mirror… the staccato rattle of the red car on his left side raking a half-dozen stationary vehicles…thwack of concrete against rubber…The slewed cars stop thirty yards apart, engines cut, and for a moment there’s silence and no one gets out.
* * *
… He already sees ahead into the weeks, the months of paperwork, insurance claims and counterclaims…Something original and pristine has been stolen from his car…His car will never be the same again.”
This sudden tension cut again engages, and makes, the reader want to continue with their read. Despite the constant tension then anticlimax, like a heart-rate monitor, throughout the novel, the reader continues because they want to find out what happens next, they want to get inside Perowne’s head, just like he’d do during neurosurgery.
With so much detail, depth and reader-involvement, one might think these events would almost have to take place over a few days or at least a weekend? No - the unusual thing about “Saturday” is that it’s structured around one day. Twenty four little hours. This doesn’t allow McEwan a lot of time to put the reader in Perowne’s mind or even get much detail in? True, but McEwan crams in so much detail, with ease, in this one eventful day.
McEwan even manages to go into surgical depth with relevance to the novel when Perowne invades Baxter’s brain:
“Perowne takes a scalpel…makes a small incision in the dura…Baxter’s brain is indeed covered with a clot…He extends the incision... Perowne suspects that one of the nearby arachnoid granulations could be a source… Rodney sews up the dura with purple thread -3-o Vicryl – and inserts the extradural drain.”
One could argue there’s also a degree of irony- Baxter invades Perowne’s life and affects almost everything in it: his car, his wife, his children, and his home, even his father-in-law and his job. Justly and very fittingly, Perowne invades Baxter’s brain, which affected his life and future. This all links with the idea of the reader getting inside the mind, inside the brain of Henry Perowne.
Another unusual thing about the structure of “Saturday” is the way the novel ends; instead of a stereotypical happy ending or a fade into the future, Perowne falls asleep. Perowne actually, and deservingly so, wants to fall asleep. It’s his way of ridding himself of Baxter, the hospital and the stresses of this day. Starting a fresh, unblemished Sunday:
“This time there’ll be no trouble falling into oblivion, there’s nothing can stop him now… And at last, faintly, falling: this day’s over.
This leaves the reader feeling considerate towards Perowne, accepting the novel coming to an end, the end of “Saturday”.
By engaging the reader in such a way that one feels they are Henry Perowne, the reader actually wants to find out what is going to happen to them on this Saturday. The tension built by repetitive anti-climax, like a pulse on a heart monitor, further engages the reader’s interest of this day-in-the-life novel.
Structuring “Saturday” around a short twenty-four hour period, McEwan snugly fits in masses of detail and appeal, like a brain fitting into a skull: so much complexity, so much information, in such a small space. McEwan further engages the reader by involving them in familiar events, such as a scrape between cars. But the cleverness behind it all: the car incident is the key component to the structure of “Saturday”. It is the brain, the central nervous system, the vital organ, in the novel’s body. Without it, “Saturday” wouldn’t survive; it would be a mere diary entry for Saturday, February 15th 2003.

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