Saturday (2005)
By Ian McEwan
Biological determinism; Disability; Genetic code; Heredity
Henry Perowne encounters a man whose dangerous disease, rooted in a genetic abnormality, threatens both him and his family.
It’s early Saturday morning and Henry Perowne, a successful neurosurgeon, husband, and father, cannot sleep. In his distinctive style, Ian McEwan writes Perowne’s first person narration as a continual stream of consciousness reflection on his present moments infused with contemplations on his past. Perowne navigates a somewhat unique, somewhat routine Saturday: discussions with his son, sex with his wife, a ride in his Mercedes on his way to play squash with a friend and colleague. When Perowne gets into a car accident near his London home during an anti-war rally, he soon realizes he may be in some danger. The car that hits his is driven by Baxter, who menacingly approaches Perowne with his two thugs, Nigel and Nark. But Perowne notices something different about Baxter and inwardly diagnoses him with Huntington’s, a hereditary and eventually debilitating disease. When the men demand that Perowne take them to an ATM and give them cash, Perowne humiliates Baxter by questioning him about his condition and its embarrassing symptoms. Eventually, the men leave and Perowne continues with his day: the squash match, the market, a visit to his mother in the nursing home, and a stop by his son Theo’s band rehearsal. When Perowne returns home, he begins to cook a family dinner to welcome his daughter Daisy and father-in-law into town. However, their family evening is interrupted when Baxter and his friends mug Perowne’s wife Rosalind and break into the house. The intruders hold the family at knife-point as Baxter exhibits violent and dangerous mood-swings due to his disease. Finally, Perowne manipulates Baxter by baiting him with a clinical trial for Huntington’s in which Perowne promises Baxter can participate. McEwan depicts Perowne as poignantly sympathetic when, after he throws Baxter down the stairs and knocks him unconscious to save his family, he takes the call to perform neurosurgery on him to save his life. After discussing the day’s experiences and making love with his wife, Perowne ends his day where he began it—awake in his bed or by his open window contemplating love and war, life and death. Then, he falls asleep.
Although McEwan’s main focus is on Perowne, his experiences and his reactions, Perowne’s confrontations with Baxter make it clear that central to this novel is McEwan’s interest in the way a person’s genetic makeup affects not only that individual but others whom that individual encounters as well. In the alley after the accident, Perowne thinks about his attacker and Huntington’s as a disease: “Chromosome four. The misfortune lies within a single gene, in an excessive repeat of a single sequence—CAG. Here’s biological determinism in its purest form” (94). As Perowne continues, here and elsewhere throughout the novel, to describe Huntington’s causes and effects in detail, it becomes clear that the genetic abnormality has predetermined not only Baxter’s entire life, but also the Perownes’ Saturday.
Evaluation: The novel is stunningly written, and when McEwan does focus on the interaction between Henry Perowne and Baxter, his consideration of the power of genetics is poignant. However, while this message informs the whole of the novel, it is only treated explicitly in a handful of moments.
– Lauren Wood Hoffer