A Compact Classic 
 For the first half at least of this engaging book, I had the strong sense that I was reading a novella. It was not so much a matter of length; though its 221 pages make it scarcely longer than On Chesil Beach, at 203 pages his shortest book to date. It has a similarly elegant feel on the page, and a similar economy of means, with only four or five chapters. Both books make a nod to the classical unities: the concentration on one or two characters over a very short period of time, with a story that is almost devoid of subplots and ramifications. Both rely little on external action and contain none of McEwan's characteristic violence. They are very different from the sprawling narrative of 
 Sweet Tooth 
 or Atonement, and on a different planet from the scattershot satire of Solar. Saturday, which takes place over a single day, is even more concentrated in time, but it is a huge creation with multiple strands. There is nothing even remotely as compact in any of his earlier work. All of which is proof that McEwan has become a very diverse author over the past decade or so, with thematic similarities certainly, but many different ways of handling them; this time, he is in the classic mode. 
 Above all, he is not afraid to take us deep into the mind of his central character and remain there for almost the whole book. Which is particularly revealing as this is a figure normally seen only at a distance, as a robed and bewigged justice on a High Court bench. Fiona Maye is a judge in the Family division, presiding over cases of child custody and divorce, and delivering, in most instances, the judgments of Solomon. It is an irony that her own marriage appears on the brink of collapse, but that is merely an undertow to the main flow of the book. Which concerns the case of Adam Henry, a bright 17-year-old stricken with leukemia, who could be saved with a blood transfusions, did these not run counter to his family's faith as Jehovah's Witnesses. The title of the book refers to the British Children Act of 1989, which Fiona relies upon in making her judgment--and lives with the consequences. 
 McEwan has explored the conflict between religious belief and secular ethics before, most notably in Enduring Love, and there are echoes of that book here also. But I was especially struck by his fair-mindedness. The Adam Henry case is not the only one that we hear about; there is another, for instance, about divorcing Orthodox Jewish parents differing on the upbringing of their daughters. In almost every one, I found myself reacting in knee-jerk fashion, on account of my secularism; I could also imagine religious people taking the opposite view. Yet McEwan never left it at that, but explored both sides, challenging one's initial beliefs. Which of course is what a good judge must do. What nearly floors Fiona, though, is not the legal principle so much as its human embodiment. When the High Court judge--"an abandoned fifty-nine-year-old woman, in the infancy of old age, just learning to crawl," in McEwan's marvelous phrase--goes to visit Adam in hospital, and is struck by his youth, vulnerability, and innocence, it sets off tides in her that pull against her normal dispassion. Though never in the ways you might imagine. While McEwan does not attempt the surprise endings of Atonement or Sweet Tooth, he is also quite subtle in avoiding the melodramatic climaxes that appealed to him earlier in his career. 
 This is not quite my favorite McEwan--those would be Saturday and On Chesil Beach--but it is up there. One thing I especially admire here is his use of music. For the most part, it is a quiet background to the inner action, as when Fiona, an amateur pianist, calms herself by mentally playing the Bach Second Partita, which she had learned as a birthday gift for her husband. But there is one extraordinary moment (parallel to the use of "Dover Beach" in Saturday) when music actually carries an emotional climax. This is at a concert given by Fiona and a leading barrister, an amateur tenor, when she unexpectedly morphs the introduction to their chosen encore, Schubert's "An die Musik," into Britten's setting of "Down by the Salley Gardens." It was a moment of sheer brilliance for me, but then I happen to play both pieces. Whether it will work for others, I don't know. Indeed, I suspect that this novel/novella may well seem a little too precious and... well... small, for many of the author's regular readers. But caviar for some, myself among them.