The protagonist of Ian McEwan’s novel, The Children Act, is Fiona Maye, an English High Court Judge assigned to the Family Division, a court described by McEwan as teeming with “special pleading, intimate half-truths” and “exotic accusations,” where parents are “dazed to find themselves in vicious combat with the one they once loved,” while their children huddle in courthouse corridors. The title of the book is borrowed from the United Kingdom statute which requires that the welfare of the child be paramount in legal proceedings involving children.
The novel had its beginnings at a dinner McEwan attended with several judges where he came upon a volume of decisions. McEwan saw parallels with the novelist’s craft: “the judgments were like short stories, or novellas; the background to some dispute or dilemma crisply summarized, the 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 favor.”
