Although the web version of the New Yorker does not appear to mention it, the Ian McEwan short story “The Diagnosis”, which appears in this week’s issue, is almost certainly the opening chapter of the writer’s forthcoming novel, “Saturday“.My first encounter with McEwan’s work came through reading what, in my view, is still his best novel, The Child in Time over a decade ago.* In particular, I remember being unsettled by the compelling storyline of the bumptious Tory politician regressing to childhood. Anyone who’s read the book can probably recall the vivid scene in which the queasy protagonist unwillingly follows the huge “boy” up a rope ladder to his tree house built in the upper reaches of a huge oak. As well as demonstrating his strengths–among them an almost phenomenological approach to depicting nightmarish events (shown off brilliantly in that by-now famous ballooning accident that opens Enduring Love)–that 1987 novel, in retrospect, uncovered some of the writer’s limitations. The approach to politics and society is rather woolly, reeking of the hyperbole of the 1980s (Thatcher’s Britain portrayed as a near totalitarian regime). More importantly, there’s an emotional inertness that seems common to all McEwan’s books and characters. In The Child in Time, for example, the protagonist’s search for his missing child felt closer to an artistic motif than a paralysing obsession.In many cases, this icy distance works very well: The Comfort of Strangers is a near perfect novella, delivering its shocks before outstaying its welcome. But it did become more problematic in what has become McEwan’s greatest success, Atonement, through which the erstwhile English Kafka was taken up by book clubs across the United States. For me, the first third of the novel, redolent of Waugh and Wodehouse, played like a socio-sexual re-enactment of Cleudo (the housekeeper’s son is bonking the tearaway gal in the old library). And the subsequent false accusation that leads to the jailing of Robbie Turner for sexual assault seemed dangerously improbable–almost a breach of the trust between the author and reader. If I remember correctly, any number of people could have come forward and vouched for Turner’s innocence, but it seemed as though the character’s fate could never veer from the greased rails of the plot. It’s not so much the police who march the accused off to the local nick as the author, glancing over the shoulder at his timetable of arrivals and departures.This impression was later confirmed by the “postmodern” ending, which reinforced the fictive and pre-ordained nature of what preceded. Novel readers, in general, are not Calvinists–they want to believe in characters’ free will even if in the universe they inhabit the damned and elect have been chosen before the first paragraph has been started.It will be interesting to see whether McEwan’s smooth prose and his skill in creating atmosphere and scenes can overcome his weakness for contrived plotting evident in his most recent works. (The Booker-Prize winning Amsterdam required a jack for readers to suspend their disbelief). The extract in the New Yorker adequately demonstrates his knack at handling professional jargon and processes (this time a neurosurgeon’s) as well as his ability to stage a defining incident (here it’s a car crash that bring the protagonist into contact with a psychotic with the quintessential McEwan name of Baxter (sound familiar?)).Whether the novel simply re-visits the loony stalker theme of Enduring Love or evolves into something more low-key and interesting as Henry Perowne tries to interpret the events he’s jostled by on this particular Saturday (the day of massive marches in London against war in Iraq) remains to be seen. Unfortunately I’d say the former is more likely than the latter.*I wonder if your estimation of a writer is not bound to suffer precipitously if the first book you read by them also happens to be their best. For example, after I read a lurid paperback copy of Martin Amis’s Money I had to find everything else by him. After I had consumed squibs such as Other People, Dead Babies, and, later, the bloated The Information, the ardour had cooled somewhat.