They say that you should ‘write about what you know’ don’t they? They, being largely people who don’t write. Certainly, it is very frustrating when descriptions are sketchy and unforgiveable when ‘truisms’ are proved to be incorrect. In a world with so much information at our fingertips – if our brains haven’t already absorbed it from all the media touchpoints which we now encounter every second of the day – it is so easy to check facts before those handy online proofreaders suggest grammatical changes. I have read most of Ian McEwan’s novels, usually held in awe by his outstanding prose and mesmerised by the often-forensic detail into which he goes to draw his characters, their locations, and their actions. Lessons takes us through the life learnings of Roland Baines, from his upbringing in North Africa through an intimate yet also rather existential boarding school encounter with a piano teacher, a doomed marriage to a German writer, a second marriage to an old friend – also doomed – and on to a prospective ending where his granddaughter can still teach him a thing or two. These are the bare bones of it and, yes, they really are bare, aren’t they? The words do not do justice to the memoir that absorbs us and carries us along, backwards and forwards against a background of world events I can relate to almost entirely, the timed bookends of this life story being very close to my own. We learn about desire, but also abuse, Friendship but also selfishness. The joy of a son – Lawrence – who is as rootless as his father. Yes, all of life is in here and as we read about Roland’s lessons, so we understand him better – always relating back to the classical pianist he might have been; the person he might have developed into and the life he might have led instead of this one. Would that have been so absorbing though? Would we have willed him on in the same way, felt his regret and his lack of self-fulfilment? Of course not. This is a book of what might have been; a life in which learning lessons may not lead to the passing of any exams. But, thankfully, it’s never too late to try. McEwan has certainly done his research, fed it into the process diagram at the top and converted it into a wealth of wealthy words. Almost too many words. There were times in the book when I wanted to say out loud ‘Ian (not Roland) I hear you. I know that you know what you know.’ I would have once found it intimidating to be faced by such a web of sophistication, but I was drawn into it willingly and captivated by it. The story worked but could have been much shorter and still been just as effective. My favourite of his remains On Chesil Beach for its simple and tragic beauty. I do wonder if sometimes authors no longer trust to such simple devices to be effective and need to embellish their reputations as much as their stories. Ian McEwan certainly has no need to do this as one of the outstanding conveyors of time and place in a generation. Having said all of this, if you’re not prepared to go on life’s long journey, your own story may be all the shorter, physically and philosophically, for it.
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AuthorI am a fiction writer, currently living in Worcestershire, enjoying mystery dramas, thrillers, poetry, comedy and history. I read a wide range of fiction, also writing book reviews here and sharing on amazon, goodreads and Waterstones sites. Archives
October 2024
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