LESSONS by Ian McEwan
Booker Prize winner Ian McEwan’s 18th novel, Lessons , is long (over 450 pages), and like many of his other works begins simply and
grows more complex as it develops. The opening makes the novel look like a
reverse Lolita in which an adult woman is obsessed by her 11 year old
boy piano student (and he by her). Their sexual relation lasts for five years
and only breaks up when he becomes 16 and she wants to spirit him off to Scotland
to marry him. To some extent the lesson of that early experience is still
hanging around at the finish, but it is only a fragment of the sad life of Roland
Baines, whose given name might encourage some to remember the great French
epic by that name.
This Roland is a man who never seems to put sufficient postage
on the letter of life. After he is abused by his piano teacher, we meander through sixty years of lost promise. A gifted classical pianist
as a youth, Roland winds up as a tea-time piano player at a London Hotel. He
yearns for an artistic life yet finds only idle travel, political futility, and
failed liaisons. His other temporary jobs range from tennis coach to writer of incidental
puff pieces for small magazines. All of
this is played out against the end of WWII and the historic changes brought about by Thatcher,
Reagan, Gorbachev, Suez, Chernobyl, the fall of the Berlin Wall, Covid, and even
January 6th.
Finally, like Shakespeare’s Prospero, Roland Baines burns his
books and settles into an old age fueled by something called The Multiple Worlds Theory. This concept promotes the idea that
“The world divides at every conceivable moment into an infinitude of invisible
possibilities.” Your fate may have been controlled by unconscious choices and it lowers your chance of having any real impact
on the affairs of the world at large. You are also left in suspense as to what
will come next. It is better, as you reach your
“hinge of life,” to settle back and leave the future to your grandchildren.
The early publicity for the book asks this question. “How do
global events beyond our control shape our lives and our memories? And what can
we really learn from the traumas of the past? ” If you want a profound illustration of these topics, this may be the book for you. If not, McEwen may not be your cup of tea.
Jim De Young 8-28-22
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