Ms. Hen reviews The Children Act

The Children Act

Ian McEwan

Doubleday

2014

Ms. Hen decided to read this because she found it at a Little Free Library, and she had heard of the author, but she had never read anything by him. Ms. Hen has heard of a lot of writers, but she has not read everything by everyone, but she is interested in reading authors who are well known and respected, because she is interested in reading different types of books.

This novel is about a judge, Fiona, who is almost sixty; at the beginning of the novel, her husband asks her permission to have an affair. She is horrified and disgusted, and she tells his no, absolutely not. She is a high court judge in the family court division, and she presides over custody battles, divorces, and other types of family matters.

A case comes to her about a seventeen-year old boy, Adam, from a Jehovah Witness family who has leukemia, and needs a blood transfusion to survive, but he does not want it, neither do his parents. She has to decide whether or not he should be forced to get the transfusion. She goes to see him in the hospital with a social worker, and is transfixed by his youth and hopefulness. It's a difficult decision for her to make, and she pains over it.

At first, Ms. Hen didn't like this book. She thought the characters were pretentious, and she really didn't care about them. She has no sympathy for a judge and her husband who are upper class, and have problems that normal people can't relate to. She doesn't like to read about a judge's husband who wants to have an affair; it's just something that Ms. Hen takes no interest in.

But the book got better. The narrator, and the character have an excellent insight into understanding human nature, which Ms. Hen thought was fascinating. The way the judge describes people she knows, and the ones she comes in contact with are so well drawn. Ms. Hen is glad that she got through the beginning, and gave the book a chance, to come to its true rewards.

The relationship between the judge and Adam is so real and honest, that Ms. Hen felt sorry for Fiona. She is a complex character, and she is a mature woman, and she has regrets, and she doesn't know how to handle the situation, but she knows who she is, and her place in the world. 

This book moved Ms. Hen in a different way from other books that have moved her. She got into the shoes of someone completely out of her realm, and she saw the world from Fiona's eyes. She still doesn't like reading novels about rich people (at least not from this century), but she has a better appreciation of human nature and its complexity and how utterly messed up people's lives can get, how people suffer, and how they can suffer even more. Ms. Hen recommends this book to anyone who wants to understand humanity.