The Children Act

Starred review from July 7, 2014
The 1989 Children Act made a child’s welfare the top priority of English courts—easier said than done, given the complexities of modern life and the pervasiveness of human weakness, as Family Court Judge Fiona Maye discovers in McEwan’s 13th novel (after Sweet Tooth). Approaching 60, at the peak of her career, Fiona has a reputation for well-written, well-reasoned decisions. She is, in fact, more comfortable with cool judgment than her husband’s pleas for passion. While he pursues a 28-year-old statistician, Fiona focuses on casework, especially a hospital petition to overrule two Jehovah’s Witnesses who refuse blood transfusions for Adam, their 17-year-old son who’s dying of leukemia. Adam agrees with their decision. Fiona visits Adam in the hospital, where she finds him writing poetry and studying violin. Childless Fiona shares a musical moment with the boy, then rules in the hospital’s favor. Adam’s ensuing rebellion against his parents, break with religion, and passionate devotion to Fiona culminate in a disturbing face-to-face encounter that calls into question what constitutes a child’s welfare and who best represents it. As in Atonement, what doesn’t happen has the power to destroy; as in Amsterdam, McEwan probes the dread beneath civilized society. In spare prose, he examines cases, people, and situations, to reveal anger, sorrow, shame, impulse, and yearning. He rejects religious dogma that lacks compassion, but scrutinizes secular morality as well. Readers may dispute his most pessimistic inferences, but few will deny McEwan his place among the best of Britain’s living novelists.

Starred review from August 1, 2014
In the late summer of 2012, a British judge faces a complex case while dealing with her husband's infidelity in this thoughtful, well-wrought novel. Fiona Maye, at 59, has just learned of an awful crack in her marriage when she must rule on the opposing medical and religious interests surrounding a 17-year-old boy who will likely die without blood transfusions. The cancer patient, weeks shy of the age when he could speak for himself, has embraced his parents' deep faith as Jehovah's Witnesses and their abhorrence of letting what the Bible deems a pollutant enter his body. The scenes before the bench and at the boy's hospital bedside are taut and intelligent, like the best courtroom dramas. The ruling produces two intriguing twists that, among other things, suggest a telling allusion to James Joyce's 17-year-old Michael Furey in "The Dead." Meanwhile, McEwan (Sweet Tooth, 2012, etc.), in a rich character study that begs for a James Ivory film, shows Fiona reckoning with the doubt, depression and temporary triumphs of the betrayed-like an almost Elizabethan digression on changing the locks of their flat-not to mention guilt at stressing over her career and forgoing children. As Fiona thinks of a case: "All this sorrow had common themes, there was a human sameness to it, but it continued to fascinate her." Also running through the book is a musical theme, literal and verbal, in which Fiona escapes the legal world and "the subdued drama of her half-life with Jack" to play solo and in duets. McEwan, always a smart, engaging writer, here takes more than one familiar situation and creates at every turn something new and emotionally rewarding in a way he hasn't done so well since On Chesil Beach (2007).

COPYRIGHT(2014) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from August 1, 2014
Irrefutably creative, McEwan this time ushers the reader into the British legal system as he shadows Fiona Maye, a High Court judge seated in London, who presides over family disputes. Backdropped by the apparent disintegration of her own childless marriage, Fiona's uneasy involvement in one particularly delicate case, on which she must quickly rule, concerns the parents of a seriously ill 17-year-old boy who are refusing on religious grounds to consent to a blood transfusion for their son. But Fiona's interest in the boy's welfare only floats on the surface of her own self-regardself-pity, actuallyabout what it would be like to be left alone. After all, must she start life anew as an abandoned fifty-nine-year-old woman, in the infancy of old age, just learning to crawl? Her exposed emotions are a weak guard against the boy's own feelings after she comes face-to-face with him; nevertheless, she turns a toughened side to him, with an unanticipated and unnerving result. With his trademark style, which is a tranquil mix of exacting word choice and easily flowing sentences, McEwan once again observes with depth and wisdom the universal truth in the uncommon situation. High-Demand Backstory: The advertising campaign for this highly regarded novelist's latest thrilling read is extensive, and wide review attention will follow.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

September 1, 2014

Obsession is a familiar subject for McEwan, most memorably explored in his 1997 Enduring Love. This time the theme is a touchstone in a novel exploring a man's fixation on having an open marriage, a boy's fascination with the judge who will decide his fate, and a couple's determination to follow the strictures of their religion no matter the cost. The judge, Fiona Maye, must decide whether the teenage boy, a devout Jehovah's Witness, can be forced by the court to undergo the blood transfusion that is necessary to save his life. Clouding Maye's mind is turmoil at home: her husband is calmly insisting upon changing the boundaries of their relationship, a story line that will remind readers of the excruciating tiptoeing-around-each-other executed in the author's On Chesil Beach. In the end, this nuanced work explores compelling ideas but is not as memorable as McEwan's best. It may find a wider audience than some of his works, though, as its setting is contemporary and its major plotline--religious exemptions to laws--topical. VERDICT Purchase where McEwan, literary fiction, and explorations of social dilemmas are popular. [See Prepub Alert, 5/19/14.]--Henrietta Verma, Library Journal

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 15, 2014

Ever sensitive to the nuances of contemporary life, McEwan gives us a heroine named Fiona Maye who serves as a High Court judge in London presiding over cases in family court. When she refuses husband Jack's request for an open marriage, he leaves. Even as she ponders whether she was resisting the loss of love or of respectability, Fiona dedicates herself to the difficult case of a 17-year-old whose parents won't allow him a lifesaving blood transfusion because of religious beliefs. McEwan's recent Sweet Tooth sold especially well, and the push is on to keep him a best seller.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2015
McEwan's latest follows two well-worn story lines but uses them to explore greater themes including love, parenting, duty, risk, logic, and religion. The story centers on Fiona Maye, a British family law judge in her late middle age whose marriage is dissolving. She must decide the fate of Adam, a Jehovah's Witness minor who, along with his parents, is refusing a blood transfusion that could help him to survive leukemia. The novel follows the twin narratives of the separation and return of Fiona's husband and the consequences of Fiona's decision to save Adam's life. The greater part of the novel requires reading between the lines of Fiona's thoughts and actions as she struggles with her childlessness, her ambition, and her love for and frustration with her husband. Those coming to this work looking for a big twist will be disappointed as Adam's story very much follows convention, but Fiona is a finely wrought character worth the time to get to know. The narration by Lindsay Duncan matches well with Fiona, playing up her sublimated characteristics. VERDICT This deep character study and moral exploration should appeal to fans of literary fiction and domestic fiction. ["In the end, this nuanced work explores compelling ideas but is not as memorable as McEwan's best," read the review of the Doubleday hc, "LJ" 9/1/14.]--Tristan M. Boyd, Austin, TX

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.