Lessons

By: Ian McEwan

Narrated by: Simon McBurney

Both epic and intimate, the story of one man’s life across generations and historical upheavals: a deeply affecting novel about love, loss, ambition, and resolution from the best-selling author of Atonement.

When the world is still counting the cost of the Second World War and the Iron Curtain has closed, eleven-year-old Roland Baines's life is turned upside down. 2,000 miles from his mother's protective love, stranded at an unusual boarding school, his vulnerability attracts piano teacher Miss Miriam Cornell, leaving scars as well as a memory of love that will never fade.

Now, when his wife vanishes, leaving him alone with his tiny son, Roland is forced to confront the reality of his restless existence. As the radiation from Chernobyl spreads across Europe, he begins a search for answers that looks deep into his family history and will last for the rest of his life.

From the Suez Crisis to the Cuban Missile Crisis, the fall of the Berlin Wall to the current 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—music, literature, friends, sex, politics and, finally, love cut tragically short, then love ultimately redeemed. His journey raises important questions for us all. Can we take full charge of the course of our lives without damage to others? 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?

Epic, mesmerizing and deeply humane, Lessons is a chronicle for our times—a powerful meditation on history and humanity through the prism of one man's lifetime.

©2022 Ian McEwan (P)2022 Penguin Audio

Great book!

Although I do not agree with his liberal political views, I really love Ian McEwan’s way of weaving his stories and his fascinating characterization. I hope this becomes a movie like Atonement did, and it is one I will read or listen to again.

Lessons for Life

I approach an Ian McEwan novel with trepidation. “Lessons” is his most recent (number ten for me — I haven’t read all of them) and it’s no different. I know I am in for an intense examination of the way the human mind works, mine included. McEwan looks at human frailties in minute detail and, for me at least, the resonances are powerful. My own limitations are mirrored more often than I want to admit.

The expansive scope of this novel encompasses the decades that span the post-WWII generation in Europe and England in particular from the 1950s to the COVID pandemic. While distinctly British, many of the experiences and perspectives of Roland, the protagonist, are common to my generation — certainly to me. The shadow of nuclear annihilation darkening our childhoods, the restless optimism of youth amid the turmoil of the Sixties, the searching Seventies, the dreams drowning in the Reagan and Thatcher years, the settling for better or worse in the Nineties, the gradual drift toward authoritarianism in the new millennium, the relentless gravity of time and age all are woven together into the tapestry of a life. McEwan illuminates each piece without judgment, pulling them into the light for the reader to turn over and examine.

Shaped by a crime of sexual abuse he suffers as an adolescent, Roland seems to struggle and bumble his way through a series of unfulfilling jobs and relationships, including a marriage to a talented partner who abandons him and a child. She becomes a hugely successful and respected author while Roland eventually becomes successful as a father, surrounded by children and grandchildren and cherished by a woman who has been his life-long friend.

Grief, loss, abandonment, mortality, suffering, acceptance, the struggle to be honest with oneself. These are just the personal topics that singed my brain. Roland’s story is the story of a generation. It encompasses the political, ethical, ecological, and moral challenges that we face as a civilization and puts them into the perspective of daily life, which is the only place and time where one can actually confront those challenges.

And yet, all of this is delivered in a manner that is not heavy. McEwan’s clear-eyed and dispassionate approach to the weight of the world that each of us carries is ultimately human, compassionate, and forgiving. Roland eventually learns to let go of his bitterness and finds some compassion for himself.

Sometimes it takes a lifetime to learn to forgive.

Took a while

The book was pretty good, but there were some moments where I felt lost. Overall the narration was great and it helped me get through the book.

Perhaps the best book I have this century, and very possibly a good deal of the past century.

Full of wisdom, mystery, love (of people and existence) and it’s glories as well as its humiliations. A masterwork that offers all of the benefits and reasons we read novels, and a dazzling illustration of why our world would be smaller and more barren without works like this.

Beautifully Written

Though not my favorite by Ian McEwan it's certainly his most ambitious and well worth the time to read. Following the lead character's life and it's place throughout historical moments, it reads like a biography. I've read several of McEwan's books multiple times but not sure if I'd read this one again. That's not to say I didn't enjoy every minute.