Last week’s book club found us well engaged for some time in discussing Ian McEwan’s short novel, The Children Act.
The action centres around Fiona Mayes, a highly respected English judge who presides over the family court and who has been involved in a number of controversial cases which have taken their toll on her.
Her husband, Jack, is a professor of ancient history and restless in their lengthy, childless marriage. He seeks permission to have an affair to rediscover passion, having already singled out a person of interest at his university.
Fiona’s reaction is not permissive and the couple separates. At this time Fiona takes on a case where she must rule as to whether the court can intervene to save the life of a 17 year old boy, Adam Henry, who has leukaemia and who, as a Jehovah’s Witness, has refused a blood transfusion, backed up by his parents and his Church. She decides to visit the patient in hospital and finds him to be gifted, impressionable, vulnerable - and a child.
Members were impressed and interested with McEwan’s descriptions of Fiona’s legal world, her court decisions and the factual details of Adam’s illness. However, we were not sure about whether a court judge could visit someone in this way to help make a legal determination without formal court trappings.
We agreed McEwan’s writing about Fiona’s thought processes and her growing vulnerability with the breakdown of her marriage were sensitively drawn.
Without giving away a core moment in the book, for those of you who have not read it yet, we expressed our angst and awkwardness about The Kiss, and its aftermath and what we believed should have happened. Some of us came away from this incident not liking the book, the key characters and the way that the story ends.
Interspersed in the action the author writes half decent poetry and weaves metaphorical references to the music of Bach, Schubert, Berlioz and Mahler. In the novel, Fiona is a talented pianist and the couple loves jazz. Music appears at key moments of the novel, including a concert performance, by Fiona and a legal colleague and tenor, of Berlioz’s The Nights of Summer at the culmination of the novel. I’ll leave it up to you to look up the meaning of the words of the song.
The Children Act was written in 2014 and was McEwan’s 13th novel. He said in an interview that it was based on a true court case involving a friend. He had also seen the work of the legal profession at close hand as a result of a difficult divorce.
Happy reading!
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