Lessons
the new novel from the author of Atonement
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1.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Discover the Sunday Times bestselling new novel from Ian McEwan.
Lessons is an intimate yet universal story of love, regret and a restless search for answers.
While the world is still counting the cost of the Second World War and the Iron Curtain has descended, young Roland Baines's life is turned upside down. Stranded at boarding school, his vulnerability attracts his piano teacher, Miriam Cornell, leaving scars as well as a memory of love that will never fade.
Twenty-five years later, as the radiation from the Chernobyl disaster spreads across Europe, Roland's wife mysteriously vanishes and he is forced to confront the reality of his rootless existence and look for answers in his family history.
From the fall of the Berlin Wall to the Covid pandemic and climate change, Roland sometimes rides with the tide of history but more often struggles against it. Haunted by lost opportunities, he seeks solace through every possible means ¬- literature, travel, friendship, drugs, politics, sex and love.
Roland's story asks can we take full charge of the course of our lives without damage to others? And what can we learn from the traumas of the past?
**A GUARDIAN AND THE TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR**
'McEwan's writing is as elegant and ideas-packed as ever' The Times
'Lessons triumphantly achieves its primary aim of conveying the "commonplace and wondrous" intertwining of global history and everyday life' Daily Telegraph
'McEwan's wry humanity and gentle amusement at his own generation proves irresistible and a joy to read' Antony Beevor, Spectator, *Books of the Year*
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
McEwan returns with his best work since the Booker- and NBCC-winning Atonement, a sprawling narrative that stretches from the commencement of the Cold War to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Protagonist Roland Baines, "another inky boy in a boarding school," is 11 when his piano teacher, Miriam Cornell, begins to groom him for abuse. A sexual relationship ensues, and Roland never recovers from the experience. He grows into a distant underachiever, eventually finding work as a lounge pianist in London and, occasionally, as a journalist. He marries Alissa and has a son, Lawrence, but Alissa disappears when Lawrence is an infant. With help from the police, he tracks her movement to Paris, prompting bittersweet memories of their courtship. In 1986, three-year-old Lawrence obsesses over such events as the Chernobyl disaster while Roland confronts the lingering impact of Miriam's abuse and Alissa's sudden reappearance. Alissa then publishes a bestselling (and specious) memoir, which isn't so nice on Roland. Throughout, McEwan poignantly shows how the characters contend with major historical moments while dealing with the ravages of daily life, which is what makes this so affecting. He also employs lyrical but pared-down prose to great effect, such as the scene of Roland's father's funeral: "A thin teenage girl in a tight black trouser suit opened the door of the undertakers and made a formal nod as he entered." Once more, the masterly McEwan delights.
