"Sweeping and intimate, this weighty novel explores connections between the past and present as a man’s life plays out against major global events."
Against landscapes of social and political upheavals through the 20th-century to the present day, Ian McEwan’s Lessons explores how the past impacts and directs our presents and futures through the lens of a man’s complex, exhaustively detailed life.
Perhaps reflecting the protagonist’s rootless, stifled character, there’s something detached about the writing even as the author recounts intimate and emotional events, making Lessons an introspective novel that reflects on life’s “if onlys” and “what ifs” - all those missed opportunities, and passively taken paths.
At boarding school, fresh from his military family moving to England from Libya in 1959, Roland Baines is abused by his piano teacher, a relationship that marks him through his teenage years and beyond. Indeed, this relationship dictates how Roland connects with women throughout his life. We meet him again in 1986, when his wife has vanished, leaving him with their baby son as the Chernobyl disaster strikes. Some three years later, she still hasn’t returned.
In the meantime, we’re presented with exhaustive detail on his wife’s family history and their relationship history, as played out in a swiftly changing world that extends to the future (9/11, Brexit and COVID) as well as the past (the anti-Nazi White Rose movement, Suez Crisis, and Cuban Missile Crisis, through to the Cold War and fall of the Berlin Wall).
Shining a scrutinising light on the author’s post-war generation, Lessons paints a detailed and often melancholic portrait of a man’s “drift through an unchosen life”, perhaps issuing the lesson that personal inaction and indecision cannot be blamed on external factors.
| Primary Genre | General Fiction |
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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?
Lessons features in the following genres: General Fiction, Family Drama, Historical Fiction, Modern and Contemporary Fiction, Narrative theme: Love and relationships, Narrative theme: Death, grief, loss, Narrative theme: Politics, Second World War fiction, Narrative theme: Social issues, Narrative theme: Interior life, Fiction, Fiction: narrative themes, War, combat and military adventure fiction, Action Adventure, Book Club Recommendations, Recommendations, Literary Fiction, Literary Fiction
Lessons is available in Paperback, Hardback, Ebook
Lessons was written by Ian McEwan and published by Vintage an imprint of Vintage Publishing
Lessons has 485 pages
£8.99
