'What We Can Know' by Ian McEwan - 4*

[Algernon (Darth Anyan)]

Thomas Metcalfe, a Literature professor in the year 2119, has made it his academic goal to write the ultimate biography of a lost poem, one written by the acclaimed poet Francis Blundy as a gift to his wife Vivien on her 50th birthday. The poem was read out to the company of friends attending dinner at the Blundy’s converted barn near the Cotswolds in 2014. Afterwards, the only copy, written on a vellum scroll, was given to Vivien and never seen again.
Over the coming century, A Corona for Vivien gained a tremendous reputation both as an ode to love and as an environmental manifesto, a symbol of a paradise destroyed by greed and stupidity.
Tom Metcalfe hopes to set the record straight and spends long years over the poet’s archived documents, convinced that the original poem can still be found and that it is still relevant in his England, now an archipelago of small, tangled islands submerged by the rising sea levels.

I cannot claim to be a specialist in Ian McEwan’s work, this being only the third novel by him that I pick. Even so, I don’t see much change in focus or in tone from ‘Atonement’. He remains anchored in history, even future history as in the present story, and in the way individual lives adapt, react, reflect that historical reality. Despite the dystopian label applied to the work, I don’t see McEwan as a science fiction writer, except in the sense Ray Bradbury said in an interview that it is not hard to imagine the future: you just have to look at the world around you and predict more of the same, only worse!

I admire McEwan for his scope, his insights, his mastery of the language and his engagement with current hot issues, but I cannot say that I love his books. He is brilliant, thought provoking, intense and more than a little sly in his use of unreliable narrators (there are dark, festering secrets at the heart of all three of his books that I tried). But he is also a bit of a bore! This books is only 300 pages long, but it feels like 600, even considering the much more eventful second part of the narrative. That’s probably why my score is only 3 out of 18 in his catalogue.

Mary Sheldrake reflected as she had before, that poetry, not the novel, was literature’s indispensable form.

What kind of conclusion can I draw here without major spoilers? Maybe that all histories and biographies are suspect because we can’t possibly know everything about the past and because people lie, even to themselves, in order to cope with reality.

[ShazM]

Algernon (Darth Anyan) wrote: "This books is only 300 pages long, but it feels like 600..."

That was an interesting review, thanks. I'm not sure whether you were really recommending it but I've added it to my wish list!

[Algernon (Darth Anyan)]

ShazM wrote: "Algernon (Darth Anyan) wrote: "This books is only 300 pages long, but it feels like 600..."

That was an interesting review, thanks. I'm not sure whether you were really recommending it but I've ad..."

It was intellectually stimulating, but a little dry in the first half. It gets much better in the second, for those reader who are patient and enjoy academic studies

[Joy D]

I really enjoyed this one.

[Algernon (Darth Anyan)]

Joy D wrote: "I really enjoyed this one."

I'm glad somebody did, for myself I have a love-hate relationship with the author