Improbable, unconvincing and lazy – Ian McEwan’s latest is unforgivable

The Children Act could hardly be more attuned to the temper of the times, appearing just as our newspapers are full of a story about parents absconding to Spain with their critically ill child. The incident makes us wonder who should have ultimate responsibility for a sick minor: his parents, his doctors, the law?

Ian McEwan’s short novel examines these very questions and, like the family currently in the headlines, his patient is a Jehovah’s Witness. Here the boy is suffering from leukemia and requires immediate treatment, but his religion forbids the transfusion of blood. The book’s heroine, Fiona Maye, is a judge whose task it is to determine what is in the boy’s best interests. Should religious belief be permitted to trump medical knowledge and how should the law approach such a case?

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