ABSTRACT
For decades, the very category of 'literature' was questioned by some academic critics, not withstanding that they sat in tenured chairs devoted to the study of the stuff. This is why the author found reading Ian McEwan's Saturday disturbing in a way that the author most certainly had not intended. The problem is that the novel is at many crucial points simply implausible to the point of absurdity. Many regard Saturday as his finest work, representing the best of what contemporary literary fiction has to offer as a mirror in which people might see, and reflect upon, ourselves. Henry Perowne, the hero of Saturday, is a neurosurgeon: someone with serious responsibilities, facing real challenges and, what is more, in a world. Truth may be stranger than fiction but it does not have a definite narrative line. Saturday really did not deserve the ridiculous praise heaped on it. This might provoke certain novelists to raise their game and try harder.
