Ian McEwan - The Children Act

He said simply, “I’ve been watching you sleep.”

After a while, a long while, she whispered, “Thank you.”

Then she asked him if he would still love her once she had told him the whole story. It was an impossible question, for he knew almost nothing yet. She suspected he would try to persuade her that her guilt was misplaced.

He put his hand on her shoulder and drew her to him. “Of course I will.”

They lay face-to-face in the semidarkness, and while the great rain-cleansed city beyond the room settled to its softer nocturnal rhythms and their marriage uneasily resumed, she told him in a steady quiet voice of her shame, of the sweet boy’s passion for life and her part in his death.

This novel would not exist without Sir Alan Ward, lately of the Court of Appeal, a judge of great wisdom, wit and humanity. My story has its origins in a case he presided over in the High Court in 1990, and another in the Court of Appeal in 2000. However, my characters, their views, personalities and circumstances, bear no relation to any of the parties in either of those cases. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Sir Alan for advising me on various legal technicalities as well the everyday existence of a High Court judge. I’m grateful to him also for taking time to read a draft and make comments. I lay claim to any inaccuracies.

Similarly, I have drawn on a superbly written judgment by Sir James Munby in 2012 and, again, my characters are entirely fictional and bear no resemblance to the participants in that case.

I am grateful for the advice of Bruce Barker-Benfield of the Bodleian Library, and of James Wood of Doughty Street Chambers. I am also grateful to have read Managing Without Blood , a thoughtful and wide-ranging thesis by the barrister and Jehovah’s Witness Richard Daniel. Once again, I am indebted to Annalena McAfee, Tim Garton Ash and Alex Bowler for their close readings and helpful suggestions.

Ian McEwan is the bestselling author of fifteen books, including the novels Sweet Tooth ; Solar , winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize; On Chesil Beach ; Saturday ; Atonement , winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the W. H. Smith Literary Award; The Comfort of Strangers and Black Dogs , both shortlisted for the Booker Prize; Amsterdam , winner of the Booker Prize; and The Child in Time , winner of the Whitbread Award; as well as the story collections First Love, Last Rites , winner of the Somerset Maugham Award, and In Between the Sheets . He lives in Gloucestershire.

First Love, Last Rites

In Between the Sheets

The Cement Garden

The Comfort of Strangers

The Child in Time

The Innocent

Black Dogs

The Daydreamer

Enduring Love

Amsterdam

Atonement

Saturday

On Chesil Beach

Solar

Sweet Tooth

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2014 by Ian McEwan

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, a division of Random House LLC, New York, a Penguin Random House company.

www.nanatalese.com

Originally published in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape, an imprint of the Random House Group Ltd., London

DOUBLEDAY is a registered trademark of Random House LLC. Nan A. Talese and the colophon are trademarks of Random House LLC.

Ian McEwan is an unlimited company no. 7473219 registered in England and Wales.

Jacket design by Michael J. Windsor

Jacket illustrations: blood © rangizzz/Shutterstock; texture © Flas100/Shutterstock

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

McEwan, Ian, author.

The children act : a novel / Ian McEwan. — First American edition.

pages cm

ISBN 978-0-385-53970-8 (hardcover) — ISBN 978-0-385-53971-5 (eBook)

1. Women judges—Fiction. 2. Self-actualization (Psychology) in women—Fiction. 3. Religion and law—England—Fiction. 4. Legal stories. I. Title.

PR6063.C4C48 2014

823′.914—dc23 2014018448

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