Lessons….by Ian McEwan, A Review

I have admired Ian McEwan’s work for years. As his oeuvre continues to grow, I have read many of his novels: The Cement Garden, The Child in Time, Atonement and On Chesil Beach.

I was also delighted with the rendering to film of both his Atonement and Chesil Beach. McEwan’s ability to create a story line, yet allow the reader to wander away for periods of back story, worked for me in both of those novels.

But not with this newest one, LESSONS. It’s a lengthy story, McEwan often seeming to be “all over the place.” Reviewers are praising the book for its ability to cover large swaths of history. It made me question whether McEwan had taken copious notes while reading about life in East and West Berlin before the wall came down, or having experienced in his own life the pull between one’s choice and another, all of that leaving pain and wonder, but most of all regret.

It is entitled LESSONS, the work being haunted by the main character, Roland Baines, and his continuing obsession with his predatory piano teacher. Her work is more sex than music, and sex in many forms. And this all started when the boy is only eleven, the experience floating in and out of the story, as if those moments in young Roland’s life have cut into his adult choices, and in some ways made him incapable of shaking them off. “Initial sexual adventures control the rest of one’s life.”

And in truth, there must be lessons there. Roland is unable to break from the physical longing she arouses in him, despite her abrupt changes when she berates him mentally and sometimes physically. (The fellow needed a good shrink then and forever.) McEwan seems to be emphasizing once again the deep and unseen effects that sex has on a child’s movement into adulthood. (Atonement) But certainly the man can write, knows much about European history, and the scourge and yet joy of personal relationships. He also slips in those angry or disappointed gods in modern form: Hitler, Nasser, Khrushchev, Kennedy, Gorbachev. Maybe in some ways they shaped McEwan’s life, but also failed to provide his MC Roland with insight into international affairs.

Publishing director, Michal Shavit, who acquired the novel, best describes it: “A universal story of love, acceptance and sacrifice, longing, desire and of harm in childhood and its long-term impact. Set against the most amazing backdrop of world defining events, this is the story of an extraordinary century and an ordinary man grappling with all that it is to be human.”  Amen.

 

Facebook Twitter LinkedInPinterest