One wild day in a doctor's life

Early one morning in 2003: A London neurosurgeon stands at his bedroom window and watches a plane on fire fly past. Is it mechanical failure or an act of terrorism? The question is quickly answered, but the sight sets the doctor off on a day-long rumination about the (still-pending) war in Iraq and the character of Western life since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

It's been 3-1/2 years since those attacks, and this spring marks the first wave of books from so-called "literary" novelists attempting to address the subject. Of the eight or so authors whose works are currently scheduled, Ian McEwan is by far the most eminent.

The award-winning British novelist is a finalist for the first Man Booker International Prize for lifetime achievement, along with writers such as Doris Lessing, John Updike, and Philip Roth. And his previous work, "Atonement," which won the National Book Critics Circle award, had the most lovely and heartbreaking ending of any book I read in 2002.

"Saturday," as its name suggests, takes place during one extremely long day in the life of Henry Perowne. Like Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway before him, Henry is going shopping for a dinner party - only he's buying fish rather than flowers. His party is also the scene of a reunion, a reconciliation between his daughter, a just-published poet, and her grandfather, a literary lion and chronic alcoholic.

Henry is, to the bottom of his medulla oblongata, a decent man. He loves his wife, an attorney for a newspaper; he is a doting father to his two children. He spends his working hours trying to save lives. For readers who aren't devotees of TV's "E.R.," Henry's work is described in great clinical detail - called medical porn in a prepublication book periodical, Kirkus Reviews. Henry still regularly visits his mother, even though she doesn't recognize him anymore. He, bless him, has views on the war on Iraq that don't fit neatly on a bumper sticker.

And he's been given every material thing a modern being could covet - including a Mercedes 500. He enjoys good health. His home is opulent; his wife lovely; his children ridiculously gifted. I have colleagues who would burst into hysterical choking laughter at the ease with which 23-year-old Daisy lands her first published poetry collection, from a prestigious London publisher, no less. Ditto for Theo, an easygoing bluesman who has jammed with everybody from Ry Cooder to Eric Clapton by the age of 18.

Henry has no use for religion - what he calls the supernatural. Not only doesn't Henry believe in God, he doesn't believe that anybody else (read: upper-middle-class, white, English speakers) does either. Or if they do, the neurosurgeon is convinced that their faith is a pernicious form of mental illness.

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