What We Can Know

One of the best things about reviewing for this august journal is discovering new books and authors while also finishing books that you may not have otherwise stuck with. I was initially reluctant to read this novel as I have little interest in stories set in the future. In spite of opening with a 2119 start date, this novel engages quickly and you soon get past the premise. In this future, the world has survived a limited nuclear engagement, the rising of the oceans (the Inundation) due to the Great Derangement (ignoring climate change) and multiple ecological disasters. Over half of the world’s population is dead and the survivors live in a very bleak and different world from ours.

Tom Metcalfe is a scholar researching and lecturing at the shabby University of the South Downs in one of Britain’s remaining archipelagos. His course is called ‘The Literature and History Joint Programme in Postgraduate Studies, 1990 to 2030’. He becomes obsessed with finding a legendary poem that was written on calf skin and read only once, by the great poet Francis Blundy, in honour of his wife Vivien at a now-famous dinner. The poem was never printed and the only copy disappeared soon after the dinner.

Tom and his wife, Rose, think they have deciphered a clue as to its whereabouts, so they undertake a perilous trip across the flooded lowlands in search of this prize, which will secure them fame and tenure.

I won’t disclose the result, but the second half of this novel is informed by this odyssey.

Ian McEwan’s familiar themes appear: infidelity, betrayal, obsessive lust and destructive anger. But with the two timelines, there is a sadness in the first part of the book at all humanity has destroyed and discarded in this era.