The Children Act by Ian McEwan Jonathan Cape 4 stars Readers should expect the unexpected with any Ian McEwan novel. Suspense is a given, as is the odd stunning reversal. His stock in trade includes an ability in novel after novel to portray professionals at highly skilled work, and their elementary stumbles. He has a knack for getting under the skin of his women too, most notably in Atonement . In The Children Act , the professional is Fiona Maye, a 59-year-old High Court judge in London. She is entirely credible as we watch her at work in her chambers, in court and at home in her nearby flat. She loves the legal life: the rigour of the law, the banter and irony of her colleagues - their defence against the often dry details they wrangle with interminably - and their Christmas concerts in the Great Hall at Gray's Inn, where she performs classical songs. She is as married to the law as some women become brides of Christ. Unlike them, however, she has a husband she takes for granted after 35 years of marriage; they don't have children. McEwan is meticulous in presenting the legal cases, but there is some tiresome repetition when in court scenes he goes back over issues he has already explained Some cases have had a special impact on her: that of the conjoined twins of a Catholic couple who, in obedience to what they take to be God's will, do not want surgery although both twins are certain to die. In accordance with the act of the title, which lays down that the best interests of minors prevail over the wishes of parents or guardians, she determines that they be separated, at the expense of the unviable one, to save the other's life. Then there is the case of a Muslim who is about to take his daughter back to Rabat to protect her from Western influences. Fiona's sympathies are with the English mother. And as the novel opens, the judge is polishing for publication her judgment on the case of an Orthodox Jew who opposes his divorced Jewish wife's decision to send their daughters to a co-educational school which will wean them from narrow traditions. Again, no prizes for guessing who wins. Fiona has a brilliant career, and has cultured tastes in literature and music, but she's not doing as well as she thinks on the domestic front. She and Jack, a university professor, are a "mini institution" but he feels that the élan has gone out of their marriage. He tells her he intends to have a last shot at "sexual ecstasy" with a 28-year-old statistician although he "still loves" Fiona. When she rejects his open marriage proposal, Jack walks out, leaving her "in the infancy of old age, learning to crawl". This shock coincides with an emergency case: a teenager, Adam, will die of leukaemia unless she overrules his Jehovah's Witness parents who, as a tenet of their faith, oppose the necessary blood transfusion. Adam is within three months of his 18th birthday, when he can decide for himself, but for now, obedient to his parents' beliefs, he is willing to die. She has to give her verdict within three days or he will suffer severe brain or kidney damage, if not death. This is not just another knotty problem, because this time the judge abandons "God-like distance" to become personally involved. She visits the teenager in hospital. This provides the best scene in the book as Adam provokes the judge, shows her his poetry and plays the violin for her, evoking a response far beyond her formal role. Readers may not be surprised when she eventually decides for the hospital. When Adam regains his health and returns to school, he writes repeatedly to the judge because he considers her "the antidote against the poison of his parents' religion": she has saved him. He even follows her when she goes to Newcastle to sit on other cases. On a stormy night, he arrives sopping wet at a dinner she is attending with other dignitaries. She leaves them to find out what he wants, which is life guidance: he hopes he can move in with her. He has no conscious sexual aim - nor has she - but she gives him a fleeting kiss before sending him away to one of his relatives. Adam is somewhere between the child she has never had and, potentially, a new lover. However, she regrets her impulsive kiss and, on returning to London, tries to mend her marriage to Jack, who has returned chastened from his brief fling. What then happens to Adam is the twist, which involves inconsistencies regarding both himself and his parents. In interviews McEwan says the twists are based on an actual case, but they need more development in fiction to seem plausible. Poet and playwright T.S. Eliot once wrote admiringly that novelist Henry James had "a mind so fine no idea could violate it". The danger of ideas is that they may not be embodied, but remain separate from the narrative. For Eliot, and James, the novelist has to find ways to absorb or dramatise them, but there are other ways that work. Saul Bellow, for example, got away with introducing ideas because of his exuberant prose and his colourful range of characters: he staged a kind of intellectual vaudeville. McEwan has a taut prose style, a dry sense of humour and a smaller range than Bellow; he has skilfully created a protagonist who, caught in a disabling crisis in her life, must judge others wisely and fairly when "love turns to loathing". The Children Act 1989 is a British law that asserts the interests of the child are paramount to that of the parents, but is neutral about religious issues. However, McEwan's The Children Act seems contrived - to a certain extent - to show religion taken seriously wrecks lives. Is it a confirmation of what he once said: that he has "no patience whatsoever with religion"? He says judges must decide cases not on religious or theological grounds, but according to the children's welfare. That is the law, but here religion is linked to a series of easy targets. The stage machinery creaks. One of the judge's final thoughts is that Adam came to find her, "wanting what everyone wanted, and what only free-thinking people, not the supernatural, could give. Meaning." This seems a circular statement, because "free-thinking" here is synonymous with "right thinking". However, the judge's words may not be the author's declaration but a reflection which adds depth to her portrayal: that she had failed Adam because she had not provided with continuity that mixture of free thinking, good taste and appreciation of the arts, which was all she had to offer. Instead she kept to her path, avoiding risks and guarding her reputation when she rejected his request to take him in. Her parting thought is a reflection on her shortcomings. A novel has to be judged on whether it achieves a convincing portrayal of life. The judge is convincing, while her husband is a wan figure. Adam has the ingenuous charm of the young: he is almost an embodiment of doomed youth. McEwan is meticulous in presenting the legal cases, but there is some tiresome repetition when in court scenes he goes back over issues he has already explained. Plus he can be preachy, as in a passage about ecology. This spare novel is thought-provoking because it is relevant to issues such as abortion, euthanasia and fanatical terrorism, but it is limited by the feeling that McEwan is working to a brief. thereview@scmp.com
