Can we take full charge of the course of our lives without damage to others? How do global events beyond our control shape our lives and our memories? And what can we really learn from the traumas of the past?Įpic, mesmerising and deeply humane, Lessons is a chronicle for our times-a powerful meditation on history and humanity through the prism of one man’s lifetime. That one sentence in Ian McEwan’s new novel, Lessons, nicely sums up the book. His journey raises important questions for us all. Knopf) Roland occasionally reflected on the events and accidents, personal and global, minuscule and momentous that had formed and determined his existence. Haunted by lost opportunities, he seeks solace through every possible means-music, literature, friends, sex, politics and, finally, love cut tragically short, then love ultimately redeemed. As the radiation from Chernobyl spreads across Europe, he begins a search for answers that looks deep into his family history and will last for the rest of his life.įrom the Suez Crisis to the Cuban Missile Crisis, the fall of the Berlin Wall to the current pandemic and climate change, Roland sometimes rides with the tide of history, but more often struggles against it.

Now, when his wife vanishes, leaving him alone with his tiny son, Roland is forced to confront the reality of his restless existence. 2,000 miles from his mother’s protective love, stranded at an unusual boarding school, his vulnerability attracts piano teacher Miss Miriam Cornell, leaving scars as well as a memory of love that will never fade. When the world is still counting the cost of the Second World War and the Iron Curtain has closed, eleven-year-old Roland Baines’s life is turned upside down. From the Suez Crisis to the Cuban Missile Crisis, the fall of the Berlin Wall to the current pandemic-from #1 bestselling author Ian McEwan. McEwan’s 17th novel is old-fashioned, digressive and indulgently long the hero is a gold-plated ditherer, and the story opens with a teenage wank. Both epic and intimate, the story of one man's life across generations and historical upheavals. Even the title felt like a scold: Lessons.

Lessons ian mcewan reviews