What We Can Know
A Novel
-
-
4.1 • 187 Ratings
-
-
- $14.99
Publisher Description
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the Booker prize–winning, bestselling author of Atonement and Saturday, a genre-bending new novel full of secrets and surprises; an immersive exploration, across time and history, of what can ever be truly known.
ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR
"It gave me so much pleasure I sometimes felt like laughing. . . . It’s a sophisticated entertainment of a high order." —The New York Times
"Brilliantly, and surprisingly, plotted."—The Washington Post • "A novelist of consummate skill."—The Wall Street Journal • "Elegantly structured and provocative."—Los Angeles Times
2014: At a dinner for close friends and colleagues, renowned poet Francis Blundy honors his wife’s birthday by reading aloud a new poem dedicated to her, ‘A Corona for Vivien’. Much wine is drunk as the guests listen, and a delicious meal consumed. Little does anyone gathered around the candlelit table know that for generations to come people will speculate about the message of this poem, a copy of which has never been found, and which remains an enduring mystery.
2119: Just over one hundred years in the future, much of the western world has been submerged by rising seas following a catastrophic nuclear accident. Those who survive are haunted by the richness of the world that has been lost. In the water-logged south of what used to be England, Thomas Metcalfe, a lonely scholar and researcher, longs for the early twenty-first century as he chases the ghost of one poem, ‘A Corona for Vivian’. How wild and full of risk their lives were, thinks Thomas, as he pores over the archives of that distant era, captivated by the freedoms and possibilities of human life at its zenith. When he stumbles across a clue that may lead to the elusive poem’s discovery, a story is revealed of entangled loves and a brutal crime that destroy his assumptions about people he thought he knew intimately well.
What We Can Know is a masterpiece, a fictional tour de force, a love story about both people and the words they leave behind, a literary detective story which reclaims the present from our sense of looming catastrophe and imagines a future world where all is not quite lost.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Ian McEwan traverses centuries and marries emotional depth with speculative inquiry in this chilling mystery about memory and loss. In 2119, Thomas Metcalfe, an academic in a partially submerged Britain, becomes obsessed with a legendary lost poem heard once at a 2014 birthday recital and never again. As he digs through archives and digital echoes of the past, Thomas’ research unearths a hidden saga of love, betrayal, and a violent crime that upends all he thought he understood about both history and the people closest to him. McEwan’s world-building crackles with atmospheric detail: flooded landscapes, hushed archives, and the electric stillness of history resurfacing. Splitting between Thomas’ future-bound investigations and the earlier, emotionally charged truths, the structure deepens the suspense while offering profound meditations on the limits of knowledge. What We Can Know is a smart, emotionally resonant thriller that interrogates what survives from our actions and what remains forever out of reach.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In the deeply intelligent and endlessly supple latest from McEwan (Lessons), a pair of scholars look back on the present day from a future Britain radically transformed by climate change. By 2119, England has become an archipelago. At the Bodlein Library, which has been moved to higher ground, Thomas Metcalfe fixates on the lore behind an unpublished but legendary poem by the renowned Francis Blundy, a series of sonnets said to have been written for his wife, Vivien, but which was only ever seen and heard by those who attended a dinner party with the couple in 2014. In the years since, the mystery of the poem sparked public fascination with its purported depiction of enduring love. Thomas, self-appointed "biographer of the reputation of an unread poem," pores over vast electronic archives and bonds with Rose Church, a historian and colleague of his at the University of the South Downs, over their shared interest in the period and their anguish that the climate disaster was allowed to happen (both attract ire from students for their "anger and nostalgia"). The pair marry, but they hit a rough patch caused by Thomas's all-consuming devotion to his work. Meanwhile, an archivist leads Thomas to a revelation from Vivian's diary that overhauls everything he thought he knew about the poem and the dinner. The novel keenly brings to life a post–climate change world and conveys the struggle of humanities scholars to prove the value of their work. McEwan is in top form.
Customer Reviews
Truly thought-provoking
The glimpses of a catastrophic climate event that plunges the world into an unimaginable future doesn’t obscure McEwan’s extraordinary present-time story of love, betrayals, and guilt. I enjoyed it immensely!
What we cannot know
Complex story about what we can know. A reflection from the future on our planet through a poem presented by its author to his wife. All future research turns out false, incomplete and misleading once the personal information is revealed. A thought provoking piece from Ian McEwan.
Starts off slowly
But is intensely fascinating, with layers of rumination about art, time, nature, love and what we can know about humanity.