It marks a significant new phase in McEwan's already astonishingly productive career. It is, to my mind, McEwan's best novel in 20 years because it is so alert to human texture and complexity. Lessons is deep and wide, ambitious and humble, wise and substantial. McEwan writes with invigorating alertness about social and political shifts over the past 70 years. Daily TelegraphĪ tour de force of breadth.

Lessons triumphantly achieves its primary aim of conveying the 'commonplace and wondrous' intertwining of global history and everyday life. Can we take full charge of the course of our lives without damage to others? How do global events beyond our control shape us and our memories? What role do chance and contingency play in our existence? And what can we learn from the traumas of the past? Read more Haunted by lost opportunities, he seeks solace through every possible means - literature, travel, friendship, drugs, politics, sex and love.

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.įrom 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. 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. 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. ' Lessons triumphantly achieves its primary aim of conveying the 'commonplace and wondrous' intertwining of global history and everyday life' Daily Telegraph

A wonderful author has delivered another mesmerising, memorable novel' Independent McEwan's best novel in 20 years' New Statesman 'Lessons is deep and wide, ambitious and humble, wise and substantial. Lessons is an intimate yet universal story of love, regret and a restless search for answers. But for so many of us, old wounds run deep. The mesmerising new novel from Ian McEwan, the bestselling author of Atonement. Epic, mesmerising and deeply humane, Lessons is a chronicle for our times - a powerful meditation on history and humanity through the prism of one ordinary man

Lessons by ian mcewan review