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From the pen of a master-the #1 bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author of Atonement-comes an astonishing novel that captures the fine balance of happiness and the unforeseen threats that can destroy it. A brilliant, thrilling page-turner that will keep readers on the edge of their seats. Saturday is a masterful novel set within a single day in February 2003. Henry Perowne is a contented man-a successful neurosurgeon, happily married to a newspaper lawyer, and enjoying good relations with his children. Henry wakes to the comfort of his large home in central London on this, his day off. He is as at ease here as he is in the operating room. Outside the hospital, the world is not so easy or predictable. There is an impending war against Iraq, and a general darkening and gathering pessimism since the New York and Washington attacks two years before. On this particular Saturday morning, Perowne's day moves through the ordinary to the extraordinary. After an unusual sighting in the early morning sky, he makes his way to his regular squash game with his anaesthetist, trying to avoid the hundreds of thousands of marchers filling the streets of London, protesting against the war. A minor accident in his car brings him into a confrontation with a small-time thug. To Perowne's professional eye, something appears to be profoundly wrong with this young man, who in turn believes the surgeon has humiliated him-with savage consequences that will lead Henry Perowne to deploy all his skills to keep his family alive.… (mais)
Nascido em 1948, Ian McEwan é considerado por muitos críticos o melhor romancista de sua geração, na Inglaterra. Em Sábado, ele conta todas as horas de um dia na vida de Henry Perowne, neurocirurgião londrino altamente conceituado. A data é 15 de fevereiro de 2003. O dia de folga do médico será abalado por dois acontecimentos paralelos, um público e outro privado: no centro de Londres se prepara a maior manifestação popular já vista na cidade, com 1 milhão de pessoas nas ruas para contestar a invasão iminente do Iraque; ao mesmo tempo, um banal acidente de trânsito envolvendo o carro de Perowne e o de um homem com graves problemas neurológicos - problemas que Perowne conhece como poucos - trará conseqüências graves para o médico e sua família. Embora Perowne tente ver o mundo pela lente da razão e da lógica científica, o incidente fará explodir forças brutais que desafiarão suas certezas e todo o seu modo de vida.Ao apresentar ruas e bairros de Londres com notável realismo visual e sensorial, Ian McEwan retrata com agudeza um momento em que o impacto dos atentados do 11 de Setembro em Nova York repercute na consciência dos ingleses, despertando a compreensão de que sua sociedade é vulnerável. O escritor sabe valer-se do ambiente impregnado pelo temor de novos atentados para conferir aos detalhes triviais do cotidiano uma carga de tensão equivalente à de seus premiados romances Amsterdam e Reparação.A fim de narrar com precisão as perigosas e delicadas cirurgias cerebrais, McEwan conviveu por dois anos com neurocirurgiões e presenciou inúmeras operações num hospital de Londres. ( )
Why review a work of fiction for The Indexer? Chiefly because of the author’s use of several very different taxonomies covering neurosurgery, Alzheimer’s disease, Huntington’s chorea, blues music, squash and fish. The cumulative effect of this detail is to emphasize that, despite much knowledge, training, experience and wide interests, Perowne is powerless to control unexpected horrors. He uses his brain to heal other brains, but he cannot fathom the workings of the mind. The complex taxonomy of neurosurgery is used twice: at the opening of the book and again near the end. The author could have maintained the reader’s interest and suspense with more simple language, but his careful research has produced a precision that gives a far stronger sense of authenticity, not only to medical indexers who will have little trouble following the procedures. Again with Alzheimer’s disease: the detail contrasts with the lively mother and swimming champion whom Perowne remembers when he visits her in a nursing home. As for Huntington’s chorea, the taxonomy is essential to explain the unusual behaviour of the man who threatens him; he is not the average street thug. The squash game is, again, described moment by moment and gives insight to Perowne’s character: he is desperately keen to win, coming close to an acrimonious dispute with his anaesthetist with whom he has an ideal professional relationship. Even the fishmonger’s slab is described in taxonomic detail which leads to Perowne’s contemplation of moral matters such as whether fish feel pain.
Overall, however, Saturday has the feel of a neoliberal polemic gone badly wrong; if Tony Blair—who makes a fleeting personal appearance in the book, oozing insincerity—were to appoint a committee to produce a "novel for our time," the result would surely be something like this.
[T]he lambent, stream-of-consciousness narrative that Mr. McEwan uses so adroitly in these pages. In fact, "Saturday" reads like an up-to-the-moment, post-9/11 variation on Woolf's classic 1925 novel "Mrs. Dalloway."
We have learned to expect the worst from Ian McEwan. Since his debut collection of stories, First Love, Last Rites, his fiction has always dwelt at the heart of places we hope never to find ourselves in: the vacancies left in lives by the kidnapped child or the lost lover; the mined no-man's-land that follows extreme violence or sexual obsession. His subject has always been damage and the way the darkest events in a life will drain the rest of love. For McEwan, happiness has rarely gone unpunished.
Informação do Conhecimento Comum em inglês.Edite para a localizar na sua língua.
For instance? Well, for instance, what it means to be a man. In a city. In a century. In transition. In a mass. Transformed by science. Under organised power. Subject to tremendous controls. Ina condition caused by mechanization. After the late failure of radical hopes. In a society that was no community and devalued the person. Owing to the multiplied power of numbers which made the self negligible. Which spent military billions against foreign enemies but would not pay for order at home. Which permitted savagery and barbarism in its own great cities. At the same time, the pressure of human millions who discovered what concerted efforts and thoughts can do. As megatons of water shape organisms on the ocean floor. As tides polish stones. As winds hollow cliffs. The beautiful supermachinery opening a new life innumerable mankind. Would you deny them the right to exist? Would you ask them to labor and go hungry while you yourself enjoyed old-fashioned Values? You-you yourself are a child of this mass and a brother to all the rest. Or else an ingrate, dilettante, idiot. There, Herzog, thought Herzog, since you ask for the instance, is the way it runs. -- Herzog, Saul Bellow, 1964
Dedicatória
Informação do Conhecimento Comum em inglês.Edite para a localizar na sua língua.
To Will and Greg McEwan
Primeiras palavras
Informação do Conhecimento Comum em inglês.Edite para a localizar na sua língua.
Some hours before dawn Henry Perowne, a neurosurgeon, wakes to find himself already in motion, pushing back the covers from a sitting position, and then rising to his feet.
Citações
Informação do Conhecimento Comum em inglês.Edite para a localizar na sua língua.
Kdyby Perowne projevoval sklony k náboženství, k nadpřirozeným vysvětlením, mohl by si pohrávat s představou, že byl povolán: tím, že byl probuzen a s neobvykle povzbuzenou myslí bezdůvodně přistoupil k oknu, měl by vzít na vědomí jakýsi skrytý řád, vnější inteligenci, jež mu chce sdělit nebo ukázat něco významného. Jenže neklidné město si nespavce doslova pěstuje, samo o sobě je nespící entitou, jejíž komunikační dráty nikdy nepřestávají bzučet, a mezi tolika miliony se musejí najít lidé, kteří se dívají z okna v době, kdy by normálně spali. A nejsou to každou noc titíž lidé. Že by tím vyvoleným měl být on, a ne někdo jiný, je náhoda. Ve hře je prostý antropogenetický princip. Primitivní přemýšlení o nadpřirozenu má sklony přerůst v to, čemu jeho kolegové psychiatři říkají představa o vlastní důležitosti. Přehánění jedine, přetváření světa v souladu s vlastními potřebami, neschopnost přemýšlet o vlastní bezvýznamnosti. Z Henryho hlediska patří takové uvažování do spektra, na jehož vzdáleném konci se jako opuštěný chrám tyčí psychóza. (s. 21)
Takhle začíná onen dlouhý proces, v jehož průběhu se stáváte dítětem svého dítěte. A nakonec od něj jednoho dne uslyšíte třeba: "Tati, jestli zase začneš brečet, jde se okamžitě domů." (s. 33)
Jaké štěstí, že žena, kterou miluje, je zároveň jeho manželka. (s. 40)
Tenhle všední cyklus usínání a probouzení, ve tmě pod vlastní přikrývkou, s další bytostí, bledá, hebká, citlivá bradavka, přibližující se obličeje v rituálu lásky, nakrátko zabydlené ve věčné potřebe tepla, pohodlí, bezpečí, proplétání údů, aby bylo možno přitáhnout se k sobě blíž - prostá denní útěcha, snad až příliš samozřejmá, že se na ni dá za úsvitu snadno zapomenout. Zaznamenal to kdy nějaký básník? (s. 49)
Sex je jiný živel, láme čas a rozum, je biologický hyperprostor vzdálený od vědomé existence tak jako sny nebo jako voda od vzduchu. Jiný živel, jak říkávala jeho matka, jiný živel - když si zaplaveš, Henry, den se ti promění. A dnešek bude jistě v porovnání s ostatnými jedinečný. (s.50)
...evoluce. Existuje snad lepší mýtus stvoření? Nepředstavitelný záběr času, bezpočet generací líhnoucích se z netečné materie droboučkými kroky složité živoucí krásy, hnaných kupředu slepým běsněním nahodilé mutace, k tomu přirozená selekce, změna prostředí spolu s tragédií průběžně vymírajících forem a nedávno se vynořivší zázrak intelektu a spolu s ním morálky, lásky, umění, měst i neslýchaná mimořádná odměna tohoto příběhu - je totiž náhodou prokazatelně pravdivý. (s. 52)
Thea is the sort of guitarist who plays· in an open-eyed trance, without moving his body or ever glancing down at his hands. He concedes only an occasional thoughtful nod. Now and then, during a set he might tilt back his head to indicate to the others that he is 'going round' again. He carries himself on stage as he does in conversation, quietly, formally, protecting his privacy within a shell of friendly politeness. . .This restraint, this cool, suits the blues, or Thea's version of it. When he breaks on a medium-paced standard like 'Sweet Home Chicago', with its slouching dotted rhythm -- he's said he's beginning to tire of these evergreen blues - he'll set off in the lower register with an easy muscular stride, like some sleek predatory creature, shuffling off tiredness, devouring miles of open savannah. Then he moves on up the fret and the diffidence begins to carry a hint of danger. A little syncopated stab on the turnaround, the sudden chop of an augmented chord, a note held against the tide of harmony, a judiciously flattened fifth, a seventh bent in sensuous microtones. Then a passing soulful dissonance. He has the rhythmic gift of upending expectation, a way of playing off triplets against two- or four-note dusters. His runs have the tilt and accent of bebop. It's a form of hypnosis, of effortless seduction. ... At the heart of the blues is not melancholy, but a strange and worldly joy.
The disease [Alzheimer's] proceeds by tiny unnoticed strokes in small blood vessels in the brain. Cumulatively, the infarcts cause cognitive decline by disrupting the neural nets. She unravels in little steps.
What were these authors [magical realists] doing, granting supernatural powers to their character? ... One visionary saw through a pub window his parents as they had been some weeks after his conception, discussing the possibility of aborting him.
Últimas palavras
Informação do Conhecimento Comum em inglês.Edite para a localizar na sua língua.
From the pen of a master-the #1 bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author of Atonement-comes an astonishing novel that captures the fine balance of happiness and the unforeseen threats that can destroy it. A brilliant, thrilling page-turner that will keep readers on the edge of their seats. Saturday is a masterful novel set within a single day in February 2003. Henry Perowne is a contented man-a successful neurosurgeon, happily married to a newspaper lawyer, and enjoying good relations with his children. Henry wakes to the comfort of his large home in central London on this, his day off. He is as at ease here as he is in the operating room. Outside the hospital, the world is not so easy or predictable. There is an impending war against Iraq, and a general darkening and gathering pessimism since the New York and Washington attacks two years before. On this particular Saturday morning, Perowne's day moves through the ordinary to the extraordinary. After an unusual sighting in the early morning sky, he makes his way to his regular squash game with his anaesthetist, trying to avoid the hundreds of thousands of marchers filling the streets of London, protesting against the war. A minor accident in his car brings him into a confrontation with a small-time thug. To Perowne's professional eye, something appears to be profoundly wrong with this young man, who in turn believes the surgeon has humiliated him-with savage consequences that will lead Henry Perowne to deploy all his skills to keep his family alive.
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