Friday, September 12, 2014

The Children Act by Ian McEwan review – the intricate workings of institutionalised power

A high court judge immersed in her work finds her world disrupted by a life-or-death decision

Ian McEwan
Bold ambition … Ian McEwan. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod for the Guardian

Novelists spend all day making everything up, so it's no wonder that from time to time they are stricken with reality-envy. Other forms of authority, in the real world, seem so much more dignified and consequential than writing fiction. The great institutionalised authorities fascinate Ian McEwan: in Saturday his protagonist belongs to the upper echelons of the medical profession, in Solar he is a research scientist, in Sweet Tooth she is an agent for MI5, and in his new novel The Children Act Fiona Maye is a high court judge. 

There ought to be a book about politics sooner or later – or perhaps finance. You can hear in the tone of McEwan's "Acknowledgments" his warm admiration for the experts he has consulted, and his handling of the technical detail in each of these worlds always seems intelligent: quick to pick up on the essentials and the principles of what's at stake, the texture of the insider's knowhow. Whether or not it works for actual insiders – what did climate change scientists think of Solar, or spies of Sweet Tooth? – probably isn't crucial, because insiders sometimes can't see the wood for the trees. McEwan's bold ambition is to describe the wood: to have his novels address what novels often shy away from – the intricate workings of institutionalised power.
    His excited interest in Fiona Maye's work leaps off the page: "The family division teemed with strange differences, special pleading, intimate half-truths, exotic accusation … fine-grained particularities of circumstance needed to be assimilated at speed." 

    The novel begins one evening when Fiona's absorption in her career is invaded by a crisis in her private life. Her husband Jack, a professor in ancient history who has been her faithful and loving companion, announces that he wants to embark on an affair – he has a 28-year-old statistician lined up ready. Fiona and Jack are in their late 50s and childless; he complains that their relationship is too "cosy and sweet", they are more like siblings than lovers, and haven't had sex for "seven weeks and a day". He has no desire to deceive Fiona, let alone leave her, but wants one "big passionate affair" before he drops dead. "Ecstasy, almost blacking out with the thrill of it? Remember that?" Fiona is humiliated and outraged; when he seems determined to go ahead she sends him packing, then changes the locks on the door of their flat in Gray's Inn Square. 

    There's humiliation in store for Jack too, and he's back home in a few days, having realised his mistake; but the tranquillity of their marriage has been shattered, and Fiona's steady confidence in herself and her work overturned.
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