‘Lessons’ Ian McEwan

 I have read plenty of books since my last entry, I just haven’t blogged about them, but this is a bookgroup choice that I happened to be reading anyway, and I shall miss the meeting when this is discussed, so I thought I’d share my views here.

There are some writers, like people in general, that you just like, and for me, Ian McEwan is one of those. And this book, Lessons, exemplifies why. McEwan writes so well about the human condition. He gets to the nub of what it is to exist, to love, to hurt, to loose, to win, to have children and let them go, to live life to the full or not, to do good and harm, to age, to ail, to die. He writes it all and he writes it well. His observation is acute and his expression memorable. He is also not afraid to be contemporary. Lessons brings the reader right up to the COVID lockdowns. So many books set their action in a nostalgic past or an indeterminate present, but McEwan is precise and current. His characters are rounded. They are flawed, real people who change and develop over time. We care about what happens to Roland and Lawrence.

However, one of the reasons I sneakily admire Ian McEwan is because his books are not perfect. There are faults. I’m not sure the police scenes really add anything, for example. And there are a couple of plot holes. If the police are aware of Miriam Cornell, she must have abused other boys, which undermines her explanation to Roland. Also, it is stretching credulity to think that Peter would arrive at the same exact location as Roland at the exact point that he is about to scatter Daphne’s ashes. He might have known the where, but how would he have known the when? I also suspect that like a lot of big name authors, there is room for some trimming in the detail. 

But this is a good book. It is a story redolent of real lives: complicated, messy and contradictory. Ultimately we all, like Roland, have to make our peace with them, the choices we make and the things that we don’t choose but face nevertheless. It’s a worthy read from a great writer.