Monday, September 08, 2014

The Children Act by Ian McEwan review – a masterly balance between research and imagination

Ian McEwan's 13th novel, about a beleaguered high court judge, is his best since On Chesil Beach

Ian McEwan
‘One cannot help thinking he could have been an ace family lawyer, with his forensic intelligence’: Ian McEwan. Photograph: Karen Robinson for the Observer

As one begins an Ian McEwan novel – this is his 13th – one feels an immediate pleasure in returning to prose of uncommon clarity, unshowiness and control. I was going to add that it's marvellous to feel you are in a safe pair of hands – only safe is something McEwan has never been. This is the best novel he has written since On Chesil Beach (2007), and a return to form after Solar (2010), the novel about climate change that was somehow blighted by its disagreeable protagonist, and his recent underpowered espionage novel Sweet Tooth (2012).
    The Children Act opens with what resemble comprehensive stage directions – Bernard Shaw would have approved. We're in the London home of Fiona Maye, a high court judge on a Sunday evening. Props include an unlit fireplace, a round walnut table, a blue vase and "a tiny Renoir lithograph of a bather, bought by her thirty years ago for 50 pounds. Probably a fake." That "probably a fake" is typical McEwan. He leads us in one direction, then points us in another. And what one especially prizes is this ability to turn on his heel, change everything within a sentence or a well-placed word. From the start of this masterly novel, there is a larger sense, as Fiona lies on her chaise longue, that an elegantly established equilibrium is about to be rocked – his other work, if nothing else, makes one sure of it.
    More

    • Robert McCrum talks to Ian McEwan

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