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| Author | Ian McEwan |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Gilles Peress (Magnum Photos) |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Jonathan Cape |
| Publication date | 2 September 2014 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Pages | 224 pages |
| ISBN | 978-0-224-10199-8 |
The Children Act is a novel by the English writer Ian McEwan, published on 2 September 2014. The title is a reference to the Children Act 1989, a UK Act of Parliament. It has been compared to Charles Dickens' Bleak House, with its similar settings, and opening lines.
Plot Introduction
Fiona Maye is a respected High Court Judge specializing in Family Law. Though outwardly successful, in her private life she must contend with the regret of childlessness and the announcement by her husband that he is about to embark on an affair. Meanwhile she is called upon to rule in the case of Adam, a seventeen year old boy suffering from leukemia who is refusing crucial a blood transfusion on account of his beliefs as a Jehovah's Witness.
Inspiration
Ian McEwan explains his inspiration in an essay he wrote for The Guardian which begins, "Some years ago I found myself at dinner with a handful of judges – a bench is the collective noun. They were talking shop, and I was politely resisting the urge to take notes...How easily, I thought at the time, this bench could be mistaken for a group of novelists discussing each other's work, reserving harsher strictures for those foolish enough to be absent. At one point, our host, Sir Alan Ward, an appeal court judge, wanting to settle some mild disagreement, got up and reached from a shelf a bound volume of his own judgments. An hour later, when we had left the table for coffee, that book lay open on my lap. It was the prose that struck me first. Clean, precise, delicious. Serious, of course, compassionate at points, but lurking within its intelligence was something like humour, or wit, derived perhaps from its godly distance, which in turn reminded me of a novelist's omniscience."
McEwan has also personal experience of the courts themselves through his own acrimonious divorce, as he explained in an interview "Well, I’ve been through it myself. I’ve been in it, I’m familiar with the Family Division. We had years and years of it. It floated from the Crown Court to the High Court in the end."
External links
- The Children Act on Ian McEwan's official website.
- The Children Act on publisher's official website (UK).
- The Children Act on publisher's official website (USA).
- Ian McEwan on The Children Act - books podcast
| Works by Ian McEwan | |
|---|---|
| Novels |
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| Story collections |
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| Children's novels |
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| Television plays |
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| Screenplays |
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- Literary Review - Sam Leith on The Children Act by Ian McEwan Retrieved 2015-03-15.
- Ian McEwan: the law versus religious belief, The Guardian, Friday 5th September 2014.
- Sarah E Green, solicitor at TLT, reviews Ian McEwan’s latest novel which concerns a High Court judge in the Family Division Retrieved 2015-03-30.
- Best-selling author Ian McEwan heckled by his angry ex-wife at book event as he talks about collapsing marriage Retrieved 2015-03-30.