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A colossal achievement! Moving, gripping, enlightening! The first great novel of and about the 21st century. Admittedly there are a few years left, but right now this is the front-runner for the Great Novel of these times. SATURDAY is so engaging, so beautifully written, with such charm and magnificent assurance, such delicacy without flinching from harsher realities. Reading this novel is a sensual pleasure, akin to consuming a fine meal with old friends over a fantastic bottle of wine (or two). McEwan's virtuosity is such that one forgets that one is reading at all, as if this story were planted whole in the reader's mind (and heart). One becomes McEwan's medium and accomplice in the telling (passionate reading is far from passive, after all) and what a profound joy and what a fine gift that is. Thank you, Mr McEwan, sir. While the sensibility is refined and often cerebral, the reading experience is visceral and endorphin-rich, altogether "in the flow." It nails the educated urban bourgeois (not in a bad sense) zeitgeist, summing up the complexities of living a thoughtful, meaningful life in an increasingly intertwined but not necessarily connected world. And McEwan accomplishes what only the very best pull off--he seamlessly weaves the extraordinary with the everyday while making the commonplace glow with immediacy and import. A life-affirming masterpiece from one of the darker novelists of our times.