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Saturday Only Approaches Greatness Initially, I thought Saturday would find a spot on my bookshelf next to Coetzee's Disgrace -- one of those novels that show you with an unwavering keen eye how culture constructs a man, and what lies underneath the construction. McEwan's hero, Henry Perowne, is indeed a beautifully drawn character. In the end, though, the novel reads like a tribute to the upper middle class and the contentments of bourgeois life. Henry and his family are just too perfect in their attitudes, accomplishments, and relationships to one another. Beautiful daughter is a brilliant poet; lovely, loving son is the next Eric Clapton. Darling, intelligent wife adores Henry, and he adores her. The great failure of the book is its contrived and schematic ending. Intentionally or not, McEwan has effectively prevented serious critique of the novel because to do so would be to give too much of the ending away. Suffice it to say that the book's climax rests on the power of Matthew Arnold's 19th century poem, Dover Beach, to disarm a savage modern-day thug. This strains credulity to say the least and the intrusion of this contrivance into a book that seemed to revel in its verisimilitude is a cruel slap in the face of the reader. Matthew Arnold was a great proponent of the power of culture and the need to battle the philistines; one takes McEwan's meaning. But McEwan pushes the implausibility factor by presenting the sophisticated, Bach-loving Henry Perowne as such a philistine himself that he doesn't even know how Matthew Arnold was. Worth reading? Yes, but it is stunning how such a well-written, perceptive book could, in the end, be such a disappointment. McEwan's early readers of his manuscript and editors let him and his readers down. This novel could have been truly great. Instead, it reads like a reassuring fantasy Henry Perowne constructed for himself.