Saturday by lan McEwan (Jonathon Cape) £17.99 The title alludes to the day two years ago when millions marched against the impending invasion of Iraq. The plot follows neurosurgeon Henry Perowne, navigating his desire for rationality, order and a comfortable bourgeois lifestyle through some bruising encounters with reality.
Unlike in some stories of this type, the hero's life is not turned upside down. He ends up more or less as he began, the same man in his cocoon.
But there are contradictions. Perowne's internal dialogue about terrorism, war and the march indicates a troubled ambivalence. McEwan has stated that he shares his hero's "twitchy neurotic feelings that the world has changed" and his uncertainty how to respond.
Challenged on ITV's The South Bank show as to whether McEwan himself was on the march, his response was no. He was "around it" and was only "55 per cent against the war".
He was "perplexed" by the "joy" of the marchers and alienated by their apparent "exclusive hold on moral discernment". And in the book Perowne, in ironic tone, comments that, "all around the world people are gathering to express their preference for peace and torture".
If McEwan had joined in he would have discovered the opposite. An enormous multitude participating for all sorts of reasons and