Ian McEwan`s unusual novel takes place over the course of one day in the life of a successful neurosurgeon named Henry Perowne. Henry is both a happy man and a decent one as, on Saturday, February 15, 2003, in London, he goes about his business--shopping, interacting with his wife, enjoying the day. (George Bush is in London, and the streets are clogged with demonstrators against the Iraq war--a situation McEwan`s hero confronts with a rather skeptical eye.) Henry meets up with a mugger named Baxter who, he immediately recognizes, has the degenerative disease Huntington`s chorea. Later, when Henry is back home with his family, Baxter turns up again, and this time he is even more threatening. Without sentimentality or preachiness, McEwan provides a picture of a good man living in a complicated world, and of the small acts of kindness and judgment that make the small differences that add up in welcome but unexpected ways.
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