Ian McEwan: By the Book：the law versus religious belief; The Soloist

 伊恩·麥克伊旺，CBE，FRSA，FRSL（Ian McEwan，1948年6月21日－）是一位知名英國小說家、作家，第一本短篇小說集《最初的愛情，最後的儀式》即獲得1975年的毛姆獎，曾經以小說《阿姆斯特丹》獲得布克獎的肯定。
  English

作品在台灣的出版

• 朱乃長/譯，《無辜者》，業強出版，1995年。
• 範文美/譯，《贖罪：有關偽證與良心折磨的故事》，正中書局，2002年。
• 胡依嘉/譯，《彼得的白日夢》，小知堂出版，2002年。
• 張讓/譯，《初戀異想》，商周出版，2003年。
• 嚴韻/譯，《持續的愛》，天培文化，2005年。
• 王文倩/譯，《愛無可忍》，天培文化，2006年。
• 夏欣茁/譯，《星期六》，天培文化，2007年。
• 喬萊特(Joe Wright)/導演，《贖罪》，台北市得利影視，2007年。
• 韓中玥/譯，《卻西爾海灘》，商周出版，2008年。
• 何穎怡/譯，《阿姆斯特丹》，商周出版，2008年。
• 韓中玥/譯，《水泥花園》，商周出版，2008年。
• 趙丕慧/譯，《贖罪》，大田出版，2009年。

麥克尤恩訪談：最美的閱讀是達致「無我」

《紐約時報》 2013年01月28日

《贖罪》(Atonement)以及最新出版的《甜齒》(Sweet Tooth)的作者認為，最美好的閱讀體驗，是達到“無我”的境界。
今年你讀過的最好的書是什麼?

按圖放大

Illustration by Jillian Tamaki

斯蒂芬·塞德利(Stephen Sedley)的《灰燼與火花》(Ashes and Sparks)。 塞德利是英國上訴法院的高級法官，去年退休。這本散文集里的文章涉及個人和國家的一系列問題。就像一位評論員說的，他屬於英國傳統上那種“激進的不墨守成規的人”——這個書名取自17世紀平均派(Leveller)的一本小冊子。但是，如果你對法律沒有任何興趣，你也可以純粹出於智性的愉悅去讀它，這是本 細膩的、精心調和的散文，有辛辣的幽默，巧妙的引用，以及對歷史的驚人解讀。文筆好得連小說家都羨慕。
你讀的上一本真正偉大的書是什麼？
濫用大詞已經削弱了“偉大”這個詞的分量，所以我們要慎用。去年，我重讀了《哈姆雷特》(Hamlet)。我認為那個劇本是一座歷史的豐碑——它描 繪了一個完全醒悟了的、懷有疑心的人，他的內心活動完全袒露在我們面前，供我們思考。即使如此，我還是非常不敬地在想：後兩幕好像不如前三幕那麼精彩，哈姆雷特從英國回來之後，那種生死攸關的緊張氣氛好像消失了。我最近重讀的另一本書是喬伊斯的《逝者》(The Dead)，這本書我讀了很多遍。它應該被看作是一部中篇小說，一部完美的中篇小說，跟《都柏林人》(Dubliners)這部小說集里的其他小說完全不 同。一年一度的冬季聚會；之後在旅館房間里夫妻二人的誤會與坦白；雪花飄落，睡意朦朧，對死亡的思考——我願意用《逝者》的最後十幾頁與《尤利西斯》中的任何十幾頁相交換。通常，小說都會枝枝蔓蔓，不可能完美。它也不需要完美，也不想完美。詩歌則可以達到完美的境地，讓你一個詞兒都不想改，但是在極少數情 況下，中篇小說也能達到這種境地。
有沒有哪種文學體裁是你特別喜歡的？
中篇小說。見上述。
你讀詩嗎？
我們家裡的書架上有很多詩集，但是仍然需要花些力氣，才能從對現實的尋常敘述中跳出來，享受隱藏在你周圍的寧靜——集中注意力，哪怕只要三四分鐘。 也許最美好的閱讀體驗，是達到“無我”的境界。完全沉浸在其中，幾乎忘記了自己的存在。我上一次在讀詩時有這種體驗，是在伊麗莎白·畢曉普 (Elizabeth Bishop)的巴西故居的起居室里。我站在角落，遠離眾人的交談，讀着《窗下：黑金城》(Under the Window: Ouro Preto)。窗外的大街以前是供驢子和農民過往的偏僻大道。畢夏普坐在窗下，聽着過往的人說的隻言片語，寫在她的詩中，包括那行非常美麗的詩句：“媽媽 給我梳頭的時候，有點疼。”如今還是那條大街，傳來的卻是轟隆隆的車輪聲——震得房子都在搖晃。我讀完這首詩的時候，朋友們和主人們都已離開了。這種從一 首詩中“返回”到現實的感覺，到底該稱作什麼呢？一種更輕鬆、更溫柔、更宏大的感覺——然後慢慢褪去，但是永遠不會完全消失。
你還記得第一本讓你大哭的書嗎？
羅納德·韋爾奇(Ronald Welch)的《金屬護手》(The Gauntlet)。當時我10歲，生病住院，所以有一整天的時間讀這部精彩的兒童歷史小說。書里的主人公彼得好像做夢一樣，回到了600年前中世紀後期 的一座威爾士城堡里。然後經歷了很多驚險的奇遇，參加了很多次戰鬥，還多次放鷹捕獵。最後彼得回到了現代，城堡變成了小說開頭提到的那一堆可怕的廢墟，所 有那些場景和他結識的親愛的小夥伴們都不見了。“他們的骨頭可能已經化成了安靜的蘭福倫教堂庭院里的塵土。”當時這對我來說是全新的概念：時間吞噬我們所 愛的人，把他們變成了塵土；這讓我傷心了好一會兒。但是那個童書小推車上的其他書都不行。第二天我把《金屬護手》又看了一遍。
如果你可以要求美國總統讀一本書，你會選哪本？
我不會用政策建議來煩擾總統，或者讓他再看一篇說美國已病入膏肓的短視論文。為了能從整體上給他帶來裨益，我會讓他沉浸在詩歌里。我認為最適合他的是詹姆斯·芬頓(James Fenton) 的作品。他的《詩選》就可以。他的詩歌主題廣泛，風格多樣。其中對衝突深入、睿智的思考（“那些被情勢推入戰爭的人”），可能會讓這位軍隊最高指揮官有所 啟發；《尖叫的男人的歌謠》(The Ballad of the Shrieking Man)中充滿想像力的狂暴，對無理性的人心是一種最佳的度量。裡面還有關於製造事端和野蠻暴政的詩。還有一首可愛的慰問詩，是關於死亡的——《致安德 魯·伍德》(For Andrew Wood)。（“死去的和活着的朋友之間/可能有一個約定”）也有情詩，這些甜蜜、迷人、渴慕的情詩，甚至能（但很可能不會）融化共和黨政敵的心。“我讓 你難堪了嗎？”其中一首詩的倒數第二行這樣問道。
如果你能與一位作家會面，包括過世的和還活着的，你會選誰？你想從他/她那裡知道什麼？
對不起，我的答案可能平淡無奇，但是每當我看着一部莎士比亞話劇落幕，即使那部話劇只能算上中等水平，我也會因為我永遠都無法認識這個人或者任何擁 有如此溫暖人心的智慧的人，而感到有些悲傷。我想知道什麼？他的那些小道傳聞，他的情人們，他的宗教信仰（如果有的話），他在倫敦銀街的那段日子，他對 17世紀的英國和政權的看法——17世紀對他來說是新世紀，就像21世紀對我們來說是新世紀一樣。還有他為什麼要退隱到斯特拉特福特。不斷有莎士比亞傳記 出版，莎士比亞與各種機構的往來，我們也知道得很多。那時的英國已經具備現代國家的雛形，十分看重文獻紀錄。但這個隱逸的人一直躲着我們，除非能從某個古 老的閣樓上一個腐爛的箱子里找到一本裴皮斯（Pepys，英國日記作家——譯註）式的日記，否則我們永遠無法了解他。從歷史的角度看，那是不可能的。他已 經遠去了。
你是否給哪位作家寫過“讀者來信”？他/她回信了嗎？
同行寫來表示欣賞的信，對我來說是一種極大的鼓舞。（比正面的書評還鼓舞人心。我已經不再看書評了。）當然我偶爾會寫這樣的信。我應該就查蒂·史密斯(Zadie Smith)的《NW》給她寫封信。我的上一封這樣的信是寫給克萊爾·托馬林(Claire Tomalin)的，是關於她寫的狄更斯傳記。
你還記得你收到的最好的讀者來信嗎？它為什麼這麼特別？
一位意大利讀者寫信告訴我，他是怎樣認識他妻子的。她在公交車上讀我的一本書，而他剛剛看完那本書。他們就開始交談，開始約會。他們現在有三個孩子。我想知道有多少人是因為父母對圖書的喜愛，才得以來到這個人世的。
你最喜歡自己寫的哪本書？
目前，我把自己剛寫的《甜齒》排到了《贖罪》之前。
如果你能變成一個文學人物，你想變成誰？
我不喜歡機場、長途飛行、以及安檢和入境的長隊，所以我想變成莎士比亞筆下的小精靈帕克，它吹噓說自己能“在40分鐘內繞地球一周”。那樣的話，從倫敦到紐約大概只需要5分鐘。
你接下來打算讀什麼書？
我正在看一本關於伊朗和核武器的紙質書——《無情的穆拉》(Mullahs Without Mercy)，作者是傑弗里·羅伯森(Geoffrey Robertson)，他是英國的一位知名人權律師。這本書介紹了殘暴的革命神權政體的歷史，其中包括一個極少被拿出來討論的事件，就是1988年大規模 處決共產黨員和無神論者囚犯的事。我們不應該讓一個如此無視生命的國家擁有炸彈，另外也包括其他40來個虎視眈眈的國家。
但是轟炸伊朗並不是解決辦法。羅伯森想通過設立國際人權法來解決這個問題。設計、獲取核武器應該是違反人權的，更別提使用核武器了。那五個大國需要 履行條約規定的義務，開始啟動逐步銷毀核武器的進程。在危急的形勢下，羅伯森指出了一條樂觀的道路。如果我們能將擁有達姆彈定為非法，能讓實行種族滅絕的 暴君接受審判，全球無核化就有了實質性的轉機。

本文最初發表於2012年12月9日。
翻譯：王艷

Ian McEwan: By the Book

January 28, 2013

The author of “Atonement” and, most recently, “Sweet Tooth,” believes the greatest reading pleasure has “an element of self-annihilation.”
What’s the best book you’ve read so far this year? 


Stephen Sedley’s “Ashes and Sparks.” Sedley was a senior judge in our court of appeal until last year and in this collection of essays he writes on a range of issues that concern the individual and the state. He belongs, as one commentator noted, to the English tradition of radical nonconformism — the title is taken from a 17th-century Leveller pamphlet. But you could have no interest in the law and read his book for pure intellectual delight, for the exquisite, finely balanced prose, the prickly humor, the knack of artful quotation and an astonishing historical grasp. A novelist could be jealous.
And what was the last truly great book you read?
Epithet inflation has diminished “great” somewhat so we have to be careful. Last year I reread “Hamlet.” I believe the play really did represent a world historical moment — when there leapt into being a sustained depiction of a fully realized and doubting human being whose inner life is turned outward for our consideration. Even then, I blasphemously wondered whether the last two acts were as great as the first three. Is some vital tension lost when Hamlet returns from England? Another recent encounter has been Joyce’s “The Dead,” which I’ve read many times. It needs to be considered as a novella, the perfect novella, entirely separate from the rest of “Dubliners.” An annual winter party; afterwards, a scene of marital misunderstanding and revelation in a hotel room; a closing reflection on mortality as sleep closes in and snow begins to fall — I’d swap the last dozen pages of “The Dead” for any dozen in “Ulysses.” As a form, the novel sprawls and can never be perfect. It doesn’t need to be, it doesn’t want to be. A poem can achieve perfection — not a word you’d want to change — and in rare instances a novella can too.
Do you have a favorite literary genre?
The novella. See above.
Do you read poetry?
We have many shelves of poetry at home, but still, it takes an effort to step out of the daily narrative of existence, draw that neglected cloak of stillness around you — and concentrate, if only for three or four minutes. Perhaps the greatest reading pleasure has an element of self-annihilation. To be so engrossed that you barely know you exist. I last felt that in relation to a poem while in the sitting room of Elizabeth Bishop’s old home in rural Brazil. I stood in a corner, apart from the general conversation, and read “Under the Window: Ouro Preto.” The street outside was once an obscure thoroughfare for donkeys and peasants. Bishop reports overheard lines as people pass by her window, including the beautifully noted “When my mother combs my hair it hurts.” That same street now is filled with thunderous traffic — it fairly shakes the house. When I finished the poem I found that my friends and our hosts had left the room. What is it precisely, that feeling of “returning” from a poem? Something is lighter, softer, larger — then it fades, but never completely.
Do you remember the first book that made you cry?
It was “The Gauntlet,” by Ronald Welch. I was 10 years old and in hospital, so I had time to read this wonderful historical novel for children in a day. Its hero, Peter, is transported in a dreamlike state back 600 years to a late medieval Welsh castle. Many adventures and battles and much falconry ensue. When at last Peter returns to the present, the castle is the awesome ruin it was in the opening pages, and all the scenes and the dear friends he has made have vanished. “Their bones must have crumbled into dust in the quiet churchyard of Llanferon.” It was a new idea to me then, time obliterating loved ones and turning them to dust — and I was stricken for a while. But no other novel on the children’s book trolley would do. The next day I read “The Gauntlet” again.
If you could require the president to read one book, what would it be? 
I wouldn’t trouble the president with advice, or with one more transient treatise on America’s supposed terminal decline. For the sake of the general good, I’d have him absorbed in poetry. What would suit him well, I believe, is the work of James Fenton. His “Selected” would be fine. The range of subject matter and tone is immense. The long, wise reflections on conflict (“Those whom geography condemns to war”) would be instructive to a commander in chief, and the imaginative frenzy of “The Ballad of the Shrieking Man” would give him the best available measure of the irrational human heart. There are poems of mischief and wild misrule. A lovely consolatory poem about death is there, “For Andrew Wood.” (“And there might be a pact between/ Dead friends and living friends.”) And there are the love poems — love songs really, filled with a sweet, teasing, wistful lyricism that could even (but probably won’t) melt the heart of a Republican contender. “Am I embarrassing you?” one such poem asks in its penultimate line.
If you could meet any writer, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you want to know? 
I apologize for being obvious, but every time I watch the curtain come down on even a halfway decent production of a Shakespeare play I feel a little sorrowful that I’ll never know the man, or any man of such warm intelligence. What would I want to know? His gossip, his lovers, his religion (if any), the Silver Street days, his thoughts on England and power in the 17th century — as young then as the 21st is for us. And why he’s retiring to Stratford. The biographies keep coming, and there’s a great deal we know about Shakespeare’s interactions with institutions of various kinds. England was already a proto-modern state that kept diligent records. But the private man eludes us and always will until some rotting trunk in an ancient attic yields a Pepys-like journal. But that’s historically impossible. He’s gone.
Have you ever written a fan letter to an author? Did he or she write back?
In my experience an appreciative letter from a fellow writer means a lot. (More than a review. I’ve stopped reading reviews.) So of course I write them occasionally. I owe Zadie Smith one for “NW.” The last I wrote was to Claire Tomalin about her biography of Dickens.
Do you remember the best fan letter you ever received? What made it special?
An Italian reader wrote to describe how he met his wife. She was on a bus, reading one of my books, one that he himself had just finished. They started talking, they started meeting. They now have three children. I wonder how many people owe their existence to their parents’ love of books.
Of the books you’ve written, which is your favorite?
At the moment I put my latest, “Sweet Tooth,” just ahead of “Atonement.”
If you could be any character from literature, who would it be? 
I don’t much like airports, long flights and lines for passport control and immigration, so I’d like to take on the form of Shakespeare’s Puck, who boasts of being able to “put a girdle round the earth in 40 minutes.” That would put London to New York at around five minutes.
What do you plan to read next? 
I’m well into a book in typescript about Iran and nuclear weapons, “Mullahs Without Mercy” by Geoffrey Robertson, a well-known human rights lawyer here in England. It gives a history of the murderous revolutionary theocracy, including an account of the rarely discussed mass execution of imprisoned communists and atheists in 1988. We do not want a country so careless of life to have the bomb, nor do we want the 40 or so other countries waiting in the wings to have it.
But bombing Iran is not a solution. Robertson wants to bring international human rights law to bear on the problem. It should be a violation of rights to design or procure, let alone use, a nuclear weapon. The big five need to stand by their treaty obligations and set about the process of steady disarmament. Out of a dire situation, Roberston argues a case for optimism. If we can outlaw the dum-dum bullet, if we can put tyrants on trial for genocide, we can get serious about a nuclear weapon-free world.

HBO 2010/9/19

The Soloist

• Director: Joe Wright
• AMG Rating:
• Genre: Drama
• Movie Type: Docudrama
• Themes: Men's Friendship, Unlikely Friendships, Members of the Press
• Main Cast: Jamie Foxx, Robert Downey, Jr., Catherine Keener, Tom Hollander, Lisa Gay Hamilton
• Release Year: 2008
• Country: US
• Run Time: 109 minutes
• MPAA Rating: PG13

Plot

Academy Award-nominated Atonement director Joe Wright teams with screenwriter Susannah Grant to tell the true-life story of Nathaniel Ayers, a former cello prodigy whose bouts with schizophrenia landed him on the streets after two years of schooling at Juilliard. Steve Lopez (Robert Downey Jr.) is a disenchanted journalist stuck in a dead-end job. His marriage to a fellow journalist having recently come to an end, Steve is wandering through Los Angeles' Skid Row when he notices a bedraggled figure playing a two-stringed violin. The figure in question is Ayers (Jamie Foxx), a man whose promising career in music was cut short due to a debilitating bout with mental illness. The more Lopez learns about Ayers, the greater his respect grows for the troubled soul. How could a man with such remarkable talent wind up living on the streets, and not be performing on-stage with a symphony orchestra? Later, as Lopez embarks on a quixotic quest to help Ayers pull his life together and launch a career in music, he gradually comes to realize that it is not Ayers whose life is being transformed, but his own. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Review

When The Soloist was originally intended to be a 2008 Oscar hopeful, the initial advertising campaign made it look like a cross between Shine and A Beautiful Mind. And the setup certainly smacks of Oscar bait: Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez (Robert Downey Jr.), recovering from an especially nasty bike accident, meets the homeless Nathaniel Anthony Ayers (Jamie Foxx) during a walk through the park. Because Nathaniel plays a violin with just two strings -- and plays it rather well -- he catches Steve's eye, and Steve, always on the lookout for a story, strikes up a conversation. When the obviously mentally ill Nathaniel mentions that he went to Juilliard, Steve decides to investigate the man's life, and discovers that the onetime cello prodigy suffered a schizophrenic breakdown while he was at the school, leading to a life on the street. Steve proceeds to write a column about Nathaniel, and the overwhelmingly positive response to the story prompts the gift of a cello from a reader. After delivering the present to Nathaniel, Steve slowly finds himself, almost against his nature, trying to make life better for the man.

This kind of movie quickly falls apart if the actors overplay the inherent sadness of the situation, and thankfully the stellar cast never makes that mistake. Although he's become more famous for performances in blockbusters like Iron Man and Tropic Thunder, Robert Downey Jr. hasn't lost an ounce of his dramatic chops. He makes Steve selfish and prickly, but also so charming and funny that you understand why his subjects trust him with their life stories. You can also see why his ex-wife (Catherine Keener), who is now his boss, stays close to him even though she left their marriage. Steve begins asking himself why he cares so much about what happens to Nathaniel, questioning his own motivations -- is it really an ongoing act of selfless goodness, or is he just doing it for his career? Steve doesn't find a satisfying answer, until realizing that this new friendship offers the chance for him to become a better person.

As the catalyst for Steve's change, Jamie Foxx pulls off a disciplined, subtle performance. Foxx isn't interested in earning our pity -- a choice that undermines so many actors playing mentally ill characters. You never question the debilitating nature of Nathaniel's disorder, but you also never question that he's able to take care of himself to the best of his ability, surviving -- however miserably -- in L.A.'s large homeless community. Both he and Downey avoid obvious melodramatic choices, and in doing so they create unfailingly honest portraits of complicated people.

Now this all may sound like the kind of trite and sappy "feel-good" story that gives Hollywood a bad name. But director Joe Wright and screenwriter Susannah Grant maintain an emotionally controlled tone that keeps the film from sliding into goopy melodrama. They make sure Steve, not Nathaniel, is the center of the story, and by focusing more on the man who wants to help than the man who needs help, they've created a unique movie rather than just another example of cookie-cutter Oscar bait. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi

Cast

• Jamie Foxx - Nathaniel Anthony Ayers
• Robert Downey, Jr. - Steve Lopez
• Catherine Keener - Mary Weston
• Tom Hollander - Graham Claydon
• Lisa Gay Hamilton - Jennifer Ayers-Moore

Rachael Harris - Leslie; Stephen Root - Curt Reynolds; Nelsan Ellis - David Carter; Jena Malone - Lab Technician


*****

Ian McEwan: the law versus religious belief

The conjoined twins who would die without medical intervention, a boy who refused blood transfusions on religious grounds … The novelist on the stories from the family courts that inspired his latest book
• Podcast: Ian McEwan on The Children Act
• Video: Ian McEwan on religion in the 21st century
• Video: Ian McEwan on Ashya King

• 
  
• 
  

• Ian McEwan
• The Guardian, Friday 5 September 2014 16.00 BST

'The family division is rooted in the same ground as fiction, where all of life’s vital interests lie' … Ian McEwan. Photograph: Karen Robinson

Some years ago I found myself at dinner with a handful of judges – abench is the collective noun. They were talking shop, and I was politely resisting the urge to take notes. The conversation was exotic in content, rather familiar in form. There was a fair amount of banter, of chuckling and teasing as they recalled certain of each other's judgments. They quoted well-turned phrases and fondly remembered ingenious conclusions. Clearly, they read each other closely. They may have been a little harder on the judgments of those not present. 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.

1. The Children Act
2. by Ian McEwan
3. 

1. Tell us what you think: Star-rate and review this book

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. I continued to note the parallels between our professions, for these judgments were like short stories, or novellas; the background to some dispute or dilemma crisply summarised, characters drawn with quick strokes, the story distributed across several points of view and, towards its end, some sympathy extended towards those whom, ultimately, the narrative would not favour.

These were not cases in the criminal courts, where it must be decided beyond reasonable doubt whether a man is a villain or the unlucky victim of the Crown Prosecution Service. Nothing so black and white, nothing sonoir or pulp. These stories were in the family division, where much of ordinary life's serious interests lie: love and marriage, and then the end of both, fortunes querulously divided, the bitterly contested destinies of children, parental cruelty and neglect, deathbed issues, medicine and disease, religious or moral disputes complicating matrimonial breakdown.

The choices for a judge are often limited to the lesser harm rather than the greater good. When mother and father cannot agree, the court reluctantly assumes the role of the "judicial reasonable parent". Here, in my lap, were realistically conceived characters moving through plausible, riveting situations, raising complex ethical questions. If these judgments had been fiction, they would have belonged in the tradition of moral exploration that includes Jane Austen, Leo Tolstoy, George Eliot, Henry James, Joseph Conrad.

Then I came across an arresting sentence. It was in the opening paragraphs of a judgment in the court of appeal in 2000 concerning baby conjoined twins. Untreated, both would die. Separated, the weaker must perish, for it had a failing heart, virtually no brain and "no lungs to cry with". Only its healthier sibling kept it alive by way of their shared circulatory system. And slowly, the weak baby was sapping the strength of the strong. The hospital wanted to operate to save the viable child, but surgery would involve deliberately killing its twin by severing an aorta. The parents objected for religious reasons: God gave life; only God could take it away. Public interest was intense.

On the face of it, a simple moral premise: one rescued and flourishing child is better than two dead. But how was the law to sanction murder, and set aside the insistence of the parents, endorsed by the then Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, that both children should be left to die?

Appeal court judge Sir Alan Ward. Photograph: Johnny Green/PA

In his introductory remarks Ward had offered a reminder to the general public: "This court is a court of law, not of morals, and our task has been to find, and our duty is then to apply, the relevant principles of law to the situation before us – a situation which is unique."

What is lawful is not always identical to what is right. Sometimes it falls to a judge to align the two. Ward's judgment runs to more than 80 closely typed pages. It is beautifully written, delicate and humane, philosophically astute, ethically sensitive and scholarly, with a wide range of historical and legal references.

The best of judgments, as I was to discover, are similarly endowed. They form a neglected subgenre of our literature, read in their entirety by almost no one except law students – and fellow judges. And in the family division particularly, they present a hoard of personal drama and moral complexity. They are on fiction's terrain, even though they are bound, unlike the fortunate novelist, to a world of real people and must deliver a verdict.

But as we all know, verdicts, indeed the whole system, can also be asinine – tough, even tragic, for its innocent victims, grimly fascinating for the novelist. For the obvious is true, the law is human and flawed. Just like newspapers or medicine or the internet, it embodies all that is brilliant and awful about humankind.

One of the sorriest and most sustained judicial errors in modern times was in the case of Sally Clark, the solicitor, two of whose children died of cot death. She was charged with their murder. The jury appeared impressed by some breathtaking statistical nonsense from one medical witness. Various other experts disagreed with each other profoundly about the causes of death, but the court showed no appropriate caution and she was found guilty. The tabloids "monstered" her, in jail she was horribly bullied, her appeal was turned down. By her second appeal it was apparent that a pathologist had withheld vital evidence about a fatal bacterial infection in one of Clark's children and finally she was released. But by then a few years had passed and the ordeal had broken her. A bereaved mother, brave and decent, harried by the legal system like a figure in a Kafka story, persecuted like Job, she lost her life to depression and drink.

Solicitor Sally Clark with her husband outside the high court. She was freed after her conviction for the murder of her two baby sons was ruled unsafe by the court of appeal. Photograph: Dan Chung for the Guardian

The Guildford Four and Maguire Seven, the Birmingham Six … a brief search on the internet will show that the list of less famous victims of miscarriages of justice in the courts is vast. And these are only the cases that have been successfully appealed. Then there are those that attract baffling lenience: a cyclist who rode extremely fast on the pavement and killed a 17-year-old pedestrian was ordered to pay a fine, and avoided jail. Or the punishment is weirdly harsh: a young man of my close acquaintance was caught by CCTV cameras on the edge of a pub brawl. He hurt no one, though he did manage to receive a split lip. On a "joint enterprise" basis, he was punished for offences committed by others, and for which the police hadn't even charged him. He is currently serving a two and half year sentence. And he was lucky – the prosecution was pushing for five to nine years. When I showed the case to a recently retired and very senior member of the judiciary, he was dismissive: "Not even worth a suspended sentence."

My young friend was often locked in his cell 23 hours a day in the Isis prison at Thamesmead, an institution that boasts "a broad-based curriculum that supports academic achievement, vocational training" etc. He lost his freedom for the grievous bodily harm the court accepted he did not inflict. Other mitigating factors, including previous wrongful imprisonment, were not addressed in the summing up. Had he been listed to appear before another judge, he might be enjoying the company of his partner and their baby, who was born just before he was sent down. As Kurt Vonnegut might have murmured as my friend was led away, so it goes.

Despite sentencing guidelines, there can be no consistency in the courts, unless everyone stands before the same even-tempered judge, as at the Day of Judgment. Perhaps this was always part of Christianity's appeal. Until that last trump, down here in the earthly courts brilliance and fairness must live alongside dull injustice. In the criminal courts neither jury nor judge are permitted to conclude that something might have happened. It either did or did not. Mistakes therefore are wired into the system. In the family division judges often make moral choices. Lord Hoffmann put the best face on it when he wrote, "These are value judgments on which reasonable people may differ. Since judges are also people, this means that some degree of diversity in their application of values is inevitable."

It follows that the judge and his or her character, moral sense, background, mood swings and attention span (one judge was recently reported to have fallen asleep while hearing evidence) have great consequence for the destinies of those who come before them. But the vast and rich fiction that has grown up around the law has been mostly fascinated by criminals and their victims, and the criminals' antagonists in the form of cops, private eyes and attorneys. Crime fiction as a genre has such sustained and wide popularity that it has become, inevitably, sclerotic with conventions. Fictional crime victims (of rape, of murder) are most often very beautiful young women. The investigating cop is expected to have a deeply flawed character and a disastrous private life. One follows less often, in fiction or on TV, the happily married detective of steady temperament pursuing the killer of a fat old geezer with bad breath.

Judges have not entirely escaped fictional invention. Apart from God himself and Judge Dredd (both so careless of due process) one eminent figure is Lewis Carroll's Queen of Hearts, whose multiple sentences of instant beheading are quietly reversed by her husband, the king, though he becomes less lenient and far more erratic as judge at the trial of the Knave of Hearts. As John Mortimer's Rumpole famously noted, a court is a blunt instrument to get at the truth.

Just as religion and religious passion and disputes have pervaded domestic and international politics to an extent we could not have predicted 20 years ago, so they have vigorously entered, or re-entered, the private realm, and therefore the family courts. In the case of the conjoined twins, Ward ruled against the parents and for the hospital. But it was, as the nice legal term has it, "an anxious question". The operation went ahead, the weaker baby died (or, as the then Archbishop of Westminster might have put it, was judicially murdered), while its sibling underwent extensive reconstructive surgery and flourished.

This was a high-profile case. Elsewhere, the family law reports are littered with routine disputes over the religious upbringing of children. Divorcing parents find themselves with irreconcilable differences over which "truth" their children are to be raised in. A Jehovah's Witness mother, opposed to Christmas celebrations because of their pagan origins, withdraws her child from the school nativity play on religious grounds. Her estranged Anglican husband objects. A Saudi father wants to remove his daughter from the jurisdiction to his homeland, where she will be brought up in his Muslim faith. The mother, a Catholic, brings a court action – but too late. An orthodox Hasidic father wants his children raised within his close community, without access to TV, the internet, pop music and fashion, and to leave school at 16. His less devout Jewish ex-wife will fight him to the end for the souls of their children.

Complex issue of religious freedom and child welfare bring these cases to the high court and beyond, to the court of appeal. Reluctantly, at a snail's pace, the law gets involved in the minutiae of daily arrangements – the sort of arrangements that couples in love could settle in seconds. Judgments in the family division tend to genuflect politely before the religious devotion of the parties, before arriving at decisions on non-religious grounds. Inevitably, there are differences in moral perspectives. Is this life less important than the afterlife? The law doesn't think so. Does God abhor homosexuality and abortion? Parliament has decided these issues and the courts must fulfil its will. Is it right to punish those who reject their own religion? The criminal courts must punish the punishers.

After a judge has heard out the warring parties and comes to settle the destinies of the children, the guiding principle will be the opening lines of the Children Act, 1989. "When a court determines any question with respect to … the upbringing of a child … the child's welfare shall be the court's paramount consideration." If this sounds like a tautology, it's a useful one; the needs and interests of the parents or their gods are secondary to the interests of the child. If the act raises the question of what a definition of welfare should be, then a judge ought to be able to provide one in the role of "judicial reasonable parent".

Three years after my supper with that bench of judges, Ward told me of a Jehovah's Witness case he had once presided over. At the time he was doing his turn as duty judge, ready at the end of a phone, nights and weekends, to deal with emergency applications to the court. One came late in the evening from a hospital looking for permission to transfuse a Jehovah's Witness teenager against his and his parents' wishes. The boy was suffering from a form of leukaemia that was relatively easy to cure. The drugs the doctors wanted to use would compromise his already declining blood count. The medical staff were fiercely opposed to losing a patient they thought they could cure. The matter was urgent. Within a short time, the various parties, their representatives and expert witnesses assembled in the Royal Courts of Justice to present evidence and argument to the judge.

The Royal Courts of Justice in London, which houses the court of appeal. Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian

A considerable distance in worldviews between secular law and supernatural belief is exposed in cases involving Jehovah's Witnesses and blood transfusion, especially where a child is concerned. And in this context, a child is anyone under 18. In law, the closer he gets to that age, the more his wishes have to be taken into account. Here is another anxious question. To refuse medical treatment for oneself is understood in law to be a fundamental right. A doctor who treats a patient against his will is committing criminal assault.

For Jehovah's Witnesses, the matter is simpler, though fraught with sacrifice and pain. The Bible is the word of God. His interdictions against blood transfusion are set out in Genesis, Leviticus and Acts. If the religion's Governing Body in Brooklyn ("the slaves") did not advise the worldwide followers ("the other sheep") against transfusion until 1945, it's because God prefers to reveal his wishes gradually and obliquely. As one Witness pointed out recently on my doorstep, the truth about blood was always waiting to be discovered. To the glib assertion that transfusion was not a feature of iron age therapies, any other sheep will be able to cite one of the relevant verses: "Only flesh with its life, its blood, you must not eat." (Genesis 9:4). Pointless, it turns out, arguing over the verb.

In the case of the five-year-old Ashya King, the knowledge that his parents were Jehovah's Witnesses may just possibly have prompted the confused, overheated responses of the Southampton hospital and police, and the CPS. The religion does not forbid its members sophisticated medical treatment and, as far as we know, in this sad and tangled affair blood transfusion is not at issue.

Brett and Naghmeh King, parents of five year old Ashya King, hold a press conference in Seville, Spain. Photograph: Denis Doyle/Getty Images

But when it is, the matter often comes before a judge as a matter of life and death. Hospitals need a rapid decision. Even if the "child" is within a week of his 18th birthday, has his parents' backing, clearly knows his own mind and would rather die than be transfused, the act directs the court to the only proper decision. The paramount consideration is clear: no child's welfare is served by being martyred for his religion.

Many hospitals have devised elaborate means to accommodate the faithful with "bloodless surgery". Some Witnesses are prepared to trim by accepting their own recycled blood or certain blood products. But tragedies occur. The law exists to set and live by boundaries. One moment past its 18th birthday, the child is no more and is beyond the court's protection.

To embrace death, or allow one's child to die, for a questionable reading of certain biblical dietary restrictions will seem to most a pointless pursuit of grief. To die for one's beliefs is not always noble, and sincerity is not necessarily a virtue. For an extreme example, recall the 9/11 attackers, and all the gullible, murderous suicide bombers that followed. Most of us, even Christians, now struggle to understand those 16th-century martyrs who chose to be burned at the stake rather than yield on finer points of Protestant or Catholic dogma.

We prefer to think we are remote and well defended from such sacrifice. But there are always exceptions we might make, as long as we are brave enough. Some scales of moral value, some sacrifices, are superior, more meaningful, than others. We honour the parent who drowns while rescuing a child, as we do the men and women who gave their lives liberating Europe from Nazi barbarity. That in turn summons the complicating memory of the many Jehovah's Witnesses who were rounded up in the Third Reich's death camps and offered their freedom if they would renounce their pacifism. They always chose to die.

Back in the days when Ward was hearing his blood transfusion case, it was still possible for him to make a minor a ward of court. At some point in the proceedings he decided to go and meet his ward in person – a clear instance of the personality of the judge determining the course of a case. He suspended proceedings, crossed London in a taxi, met the loving, anxious parents, then sat at the boy's hospital bedside for an hour. Among many other things, they talked about football, which was the lad's passion. Later that evening, the judge returned to the Courts of Justice to give his decision. He "set aside" his ward's and the parents' articulately expressed refusal of a blood transfusion and ruled for the hospital. The child's welfare was his paramount consideration.

Some Jehovah's Witnesses are prepared to accept certain blood products. Photograph: Martin Argles for the Guardian

Months later, Ward took the boy (now in good health) and his father to a football match, which they watched from the directors' box. The young man was able to meet his football heroes. The gleam of joy in his eyes, his excitement at being alive, was a sight the judge would never forget. The court's decision was vindicated. But the story did not end there. A few years later the young Witness was readmitted to hospital and needed another blood transfusion. By then, he was old enough to make an independent decision. He refused treatment and died for his beliefs.

Contemplating this tragedy one can only guess at the sorrow, the parents' thwarted love, the powerful sense of destiny they shared with their son, and all the defeated arguments of the court, the desolation of the nursing staff – and the waste. The character of the judge, who was so compassionately and rationally intent on a good outcome, seemed inseparable from the story. When I heard it, I remembered my earlier impression – the family division is rooted in the same ground as fiction, where all of life's vital interests lie. With the luxury of withholding judgment, a novel could interpose itself here, reinvent the characters and circumstances, and begin to investigate an encounter between love and belief, between the secular spirit of the law and sincerely held faith.

• Podcast: Ian McEwan on The Children Act
• Video: Ian McEwan on religion in the 21st century
• Video: Ian McEwan on Ashya King

• The Children Act by Ian McEwan is published by Jonathan Cape. To order a copy for £13.59 with free UK p&p call Guardian book service on 0330 333 6846 or go to guardianbookshop.co.uk.