The Children Act

With all our free days taken up by the Australia trip we didn't really have a Christmas holiday to speak of, but we had some days off, and on those days I managed to end one book, and read two more.
I finally finished reading Crime and Punishment, which I started somewhere between Canberra and Melbourne, and wasn't able to get through at any pace until I got to part five. I really don't know what it is with these classics; they take forever to get into, dragging on and on without you getting anywhere, and then two thirds of the way they finally become interesting, you finish them in a flash, and then wish there would have been more to read. I don't know much about Russia or Russian authors, and I read this novel in an English translation, but I think I can see the appeal.
Of the new novels, the first to start and last to finish was My Brief History, a memoir by Stephen Hawking. As this was called a memoir, I was hoping for some personal anecdotes and interesting bits about his free time and normal life, but this wasn't to be. There was one chapter on his pre-school childhood, one chapter on primary and secondary school, and chapter three already dives into his time at Oxford. He keeps saying how he is bad at math and formulas and not really that bright, but then continues chapter after chapter on papers he wrote as a fellow at Cambridge (Oxford, apparently, was glad to be rid of him) and tries to explain very very difficult stuff like imaginary time and why time travel is impossible. It somehow turns in another one of his incomprehensible books on physics and cosmology. Which is sad, because I wanted to find out more about the man behind all that. Also, I didn't understand half of what he was trying to tell me, but I get that a lot with relativity.
The other book, a novel, was The Children Act by Ian McEwan. Now most of you may know by now that Ian McEwan is my favourite author of all time. I love his style, his long flowing sentences, how he can describe a room and the people in it and the atmosphere and the history of the room and the past of people in it with just a few sentences is brilliant. I also think he wrote the best novel I have ever read, which is Atonement. Closely followed by Saturday. With this newest novel, however, he is once again improving upon himself.
After Atonement and Saturday, he wrote two novels I did not really care for, Solar and Sugartooth, which made me feel that maybe he was past his high point. Which is fine, we cannot expect great writers to be great writers with every novel they write, and I will keep re-reading the older ones for quite a while to come, but it is kind of sad to know. But with this novel, The Children Act, he is completely back on his high level.
I won't tell you too much about the plot, because it is quite a short novel, and most of the important points are part of the novel's magic. But I will tell you that the main character, Fiona, is one of the best he's ever written. She is a judge on family matters (after reading the first chapter I had to Wikipedia a lot about the British justice system before I could continue reading) who has no children of her own but daily has to decide on the fate of other people's children. Immediately, you can feel the central conflict developing, especially as the story reveals some trouble between her and her husband. There are some examples of issues she has had to judge on, including cases dealing with religious beliefs preventing people from receiving certain kinds of care, which is the main issue of this novel. Fiona has to rule on a case of a Jehovah's Witness boy refusing a blood transfusion that will safe his life on the grounds of his belief. The way McEwan tiptoes around all the delicate issues of such a troublesome premise is very beautifully done; there is no judgement about such decisions, apart from what Fiona finally rules. He has this remarkable way of writing about very complex and possibly dangerous subjects as if they are no worry at all.
Also, in acting you have the system of 'method acting', in which an actor literally becomes his character. I think Ian McEwan must do the same for his characters, because in every one of his novels the protagonist is someone completely different, with so many tiny details about their lives and occupation that it is almost hard to belief that he himself was never a family judge. While in Saturday, you almost belief he studied to be a surgeon for six years, and in Amsterdam you live through the throes of a classical composer in the midst of a major composition. Here, you almost become Fiona as she ponders he decision and the consequences.
Really, the only reason why I will still prefer Atonement and Saturday to this novel is that it's so short. I finished it in less than a day; each of its chapters is of sizable length, but there being only five I was still done pretty quickly. Not that there is anything missing, the story has several layers and follows a nice arch, but still, more McEwan is always better. This feels more like a novella than a novel, and knowing that we will have to wait another two years for another story to come out really makes one regret that this one wasn't longer. But; read it. Especially if you've never read any Ian McEwan before, it is a wonderful display of his style and craftmanship of creating very deep characters, and you will finish it in a good afternoon. And then you will have all his other novels still before you!
I, on the other hand, have dived back into the classics, and am now in the middle of the First World War with All Quiet on the Western Front. I haven't read much of it yet, but I can already tell you that that war sucked as much for the common German soldier as it did for the British, which was to be expected.