by Ian McEwan (Jonathan Cape)
Reading this latest novel by Ian McEwan reminded me of those exquisite painted antique miniatures, so beautifully rendered, with the brilliant delicacy of a jewel. Such is The Children Act.
McEwan has been nominated for the Booker Prize six times, winning once (in 1998 for Amsterdam), as well as winning multiple other awards and honours. Some readers have remarked on the “darkness” of his writing. If by “darkness” one means “serious”, then this is indeed a serious, or perhaps more aptly, solemn novel.
Short, smoothly readable in the clear and concise prose, which is McEwan’s trademark, his writing seems perfectly positioned for a novel of this nature.
A judge nearing her 60s, Fiona May, presides over the family court. She has devoted her life to her legal work and is childless, though in a well-oiled marriage to an attractive, pleasant husband, Jack.
Years back, as students, her trysts with Jack unlocked the passion within her. But the rigours of a woman working in the calculating and exacting world of the British judicial system have gradually transformed her warmth and sensitivity into a suppressed coolness, an ability to screen out personal feelings.
On the eve of a difficult hearing into whether or not a dying 17-year-old Jehovah’s Witness, Adam, should receive blood products to save his life – against not only his parents’ but also his own wishes – Jack drops his bombshell. He asks Fiona for permission to have a passionate affair, a male menopausal act of some desperation (for he still loves her) over their almost extinguished sex life. She refuses and locks him out.
Against this backdrop of personal vulnerability, she delivers a careful, sober and detailed judgment on her findings in Adam’s case, saving his life and setting off a chain of events she could not, with all her precise calculations, have either foreseen or desired. Tall, young Adam touches her with his attractive, though needy, vulnerability. In her own time of loss she remains cautious, but not quite as aloof as before.
Much has been made of The Children Act being a reflection of McEwan’s own extremely messy divorce – it ended in the high court – which awarded him, unusually, custody of his two sons – and a permanently angry ex-wife. But almost all writers mine their own lives (and those of their families and friends) for material. This gives McEwan a deeply informed insight as to how the system works, and The Children Act is itself based on cases presided over by former judge Sir Alan Ward, who advised him on several aspects for the novel.
The resolution of each stage of the book is as carefully honed as a high court’s written judgment, yet the humanity and unexpected twists reflect what we too often forget: the law itself is a human construct, reliant on and vulnerable to our abilities and flaws.
It is a beautifully executed story of what occurs when the human equation takes over.