The Children Act

A tough call. Many disagree with reducing the effect of a piece of literature to a simple star rating, but truth be told I do it more for myself and less for others. It's a way of keeping track and a shorthand for the books I enjoyed, or hated, or books that were just middling. A near five-star read for me, this book is written in a register which just works, or does so at least for me. The story of a British High Court judge — specializing in family law? (I can't be sure) — middle age and feeling it, forced to deal with a marriage in strife while she would rather put herself fully into her work, for which she seems to have considerable talent. Novels of manners, novels of the quiet intricacies of family life can go so wrong, so easily, that I'm caught off guard when someone gets it exactly right. Not that this is wholly either, but it is a novel of human intricacies, and this is what seems to trip up so many writers. McEwan seems to remember to make the stories interesting, that in fact the greatest writer of them all would poison, or stab, or rape, or to chase by bear if it came to that, and the greatest sin would be to bore, to have people sitting endless in salons chatting in mutual navel-gazing. My favorite novels are when the writer balances the equation, getting both sides right. Here is the story of these people and they are real, or seem so to us — and here is why this story is interesting absent all of that faffing about. I've read two or three or four other McEwan novels (I've lost track) but at this point I've decided to line them all up in row, everything the man has written, and read them every one, over time. I can offer no higher recommendation than that.