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. LARGE PRINT
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