Lessons
Ian McEwan
Lessons
Ian McEwan
The mesmerising new novel from Ian McEwan, the bestselling author of Atonement. The world is forever changing. But for so many of us, old wounds run deep. Lessons is an intimate yet universal story of love, regret and a restless search for answers.
While the world is still counting the cost of the Second World War and the Iron Curtain has descended, young Roland Baines’s life is turned upside down. Stranded at boarding school, his vulnerability attracts his piano teacher, Miriam Cornell, leaving scars as well as a memory of love that will never fade.
Twenty-five years later, as the radiation from the Chernobyl disaster spreads across Europe, Roland’s wife mysteriously vanishes and he is forced to confront the reality of his rootless existence and look for answers in his family history.
From the fall of the Berlin Wall to the Covid pandemic and climate change, Roland sometimes rides with the tide of history but more often struggles against it. Haunted by lost opportunities, he seeks solace through every possible means – literature, travel, friendship, drugs, politics, sex and love.
His journey raises important questions. Can we take full charge of the course of our lives without damage to others? How do global events beyond our control shape us and our memories? What role do chance and contingency play in our existence? And what can we learn from the traumas of the past? contingency play in our existence? And what can we learn from the traumas of the past?
Review
Mark Rubbo
One of the perks of being a bookseller is that you’re able to read books long before they are published. I read Lessons back in June and couldn’t stop telling people about it. Often the response I received was along the lines of, ‘I used to read McEwan but the last books haven’t done it for me’. Certainly, people were divided about Machines Like Me but I thought it adventurous, bold. Other people argue that writers produce their best work towards the middle of their career. I’ve read most of McEwan’s books but at the age of 74, he has, with Lessons, produced what I think is the highlight of his career.
It is the story of one man, Roland Baines, an unremarkable, remarkable man. Baines has some things in common with McEwan: he was born in 1948; his father was a working-class man who rose up through the ranks of the army; his mother was overly protective and hid a secret; and he attended an unconventional boarding school. At this point Ian’s and Roland’s lives start to diverge. Roland is musically and emotionally precocious and is seduced by his piano teacher. The teenage Roland revels in the desire of his teacher, but the relationship also ultimately unhinges him and leads him to abandon both the relationship and a sense of direction.
Roland’s life becomes emotionally and physically nomadic, without commitment. A marriage to a German-English woman provides some respite until she leaves both Roland and their small child, disappearing from their lives. Somehow Roland navigates this to become a good father and a good man; later in life he confronts both his seductress and his wife, who has become one of Germany’s most esteemed writers, and finds some sense of peace and consolation.
I haven’t read anything that moved or intrigued me like this in a long time.
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