Ian McEwan - The Children Act

If I had to compare Ian McEwan’s new book to his other work (and we all do this, don’t we, once we’ve read a few books by the same writer, whether or not it’s fair), I would say it’s a little On Chesil Beach and a little Enduring Love. I have always particularly enjoyed those books of McEwan’s in which story hangs together with a philosophical tension of some sort. This is certainly the case in The Children Act, in which McEwan explores the tension between religion and modern medical science, whilst simultaneously composing a story about family, the law, and marital love.

Fiona Maye is a High Court judge in London, in the Family Law Division. Perhaps as a consequence of her job, she is aloof and can come across – even to her husband – as cold and removed. The novel opens on Fiona at home, left in shock after her husband Jack informs her that he wishes to have an affair. He is entitled to this, Jack says, after seven weeks and one day with no sex, and after a long and committed monogamous relationship with Fiona. He even has someone lined up - a 28 year-old Fiona has met. He does not wish to change their marital status, he simply wants a holiday from it. Fiona watches from the window as he leaves their house with a suitcase. She is in her 50s, childless partly by choice, partly because her focus on career took priority until it was too late for children. The state of her childlessness, in the mire of marital upset that threatens to leave her forever alone, is a central concern of Fiona’s during the weeks that follow.

The drama at home is, of course, mirrored by drama at work. A new, urgent case comes before Fiona, of a 17 year old boy suffering from leukemia, one month shy of reaching the age of majority, whose parents are refusing a life-saving blood transfusion to him that would save his life. Their refusal is on religious grounds, and Fiona must decide whether the rationale of modern medicine trumps their staunch faith in circumstances where that faith would almost certainly lead to the death of their son. Complicating her decision is the son himself, an intelligent, charming soul who shares his parents’ faith but can’t help reveal to Fiona the potential living inside of him for a fulfilled future life. He is poetic and unusually innocent and Fiona finds herself drawn to him in a way she might not be were her personal circumstances not currently in chaos.

McEwan brilliantly weaves a story about the inconsistency of emotion and law in a division of the court where these two must by necessity coexist. He illustrates the difficulty for judges of making decisions that are right according to the law and, as far as possible, morally right for the people concerned. It left me wondering how on earth anyone in that position could possibly live a normal emotional life outside of court – because in order to do what they must at work, these judges have to shut off standard emotional responses to heart-breaking problems, and live with the very real, sometimes dramatic, consequences of their decisions.

Simultaneously moving and fascinating, this is a book I found hard to put down – not least because, as a lawyer myself, I appreciated the details of the legal cases that Fiona deals with throughout the book (reference to many cases is made, although just one stands at the core of the story). And as with many McEwan novels, music too plays an important role, so that one feels that the text and the marital relationship within it ebb and flow to the strains of classical music.

McEwan is back in top form here. I very much recommend this one to his fans, as well as to those of you who are new to his work.

Overall assessment: 4 out of 5 stars. I'm not sure why I hesitate to award it a higher rating. I enjoyed this immensely, but it somehow hasn't resonated for me as deeply as Amsterdam, for example. For me, a 5 star rating is really reserved for those books that stay with me long after I put them down, books that I would consider "favourites", to be read again and again. Getting caught up in McEwan's sparse language and razor-sharp observations, however, was, as always, a real joy.