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3.86 AVERAGE
3.86 AVERAGE
I kept reading, waiting for a payoff that never materialized.
Ik heb echt heel wat traantjes moeten wegpinken tijdens het lezen van dit boek. Sommige passages zijn gewoon zó mooi geschreven.
Er zit ook wel veel ruis in, soms kakt het echt in. Toch draag ik het leven van Roland met al z'n moeilijkheden en kleine hoogtepunten denk ik voor de rest van m'n leven mee.
Er zit ook wel veel ruis in, soms kakt het echt in. Toch draag ik het leven van Roland met al z'n moeilijkheden en kleine hoogtepunten denk ik voor de rest van m'n leven mee.
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Lessons is ultimately the story of a man, Roland Baines, and the world he inhabits — personal and intimate, but also global and impactful. McEwan draws in points of world history that created a noticeable scar on the flesh of humanity: WWII, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Cold War, Chernobyl disaster, the rise and literal fall of the Berlin Wall, the birth of the Internet, 9/11, Brexit, and the COVID-19 pandemic. And, for Roland, dealing with global events as well as personal ones, McEwan weaves in and around in a meandering and fluid timeline.
Many reviewers have, I know, quit this one either early on or well into it. And I get it, Lessons had a tough and obscure entry point — often when it appeared to open up, the narrative would seemingly shut down or shove the reader out. In fact, it wasn't until well over halfway through that I felt a steadier connection to Roland and his story. Even then, I felt as though the story almost didn't know where it was going and might wander off at any moment.
While McEwan's writing is as dependably excellent as ever, the narrative does lose itself quite often and overstays its welcome during certain global periods. If Roland played a more active role in his own life, it might have made a better balance of personal and world-affecting, but things only happen to Roland and he barely ever responds. While his dopey passivity might be true for many in real life and his own character, that does not mean it necessarily makes for an engaging or enthralling story.
The problem is that Roland isn't an Everyman; he's no man. A mere wisp of a full person … ghostly in his own story with historical mile markers as waypoints.
This is, for the majority of the book, a fog of a story. But I do wonder then if that is reflective of the man around whom this yarn had been spun? Roland comes blazing through childhood and early adolescence full of potential. Is his meandering life that follows just reflective of his personality, inevitably? Or is it tied more closely to his childhood trauma, a trauma it takes a long time to acknowledge as such. His sexual abuse, perpetuated by his piano teacher, is tangled up with teenage discoveries of sexual experiences…his joy, the thrills, his part-boy / part-man self unable at the time to see it clearly for the horrible behavior exhibited and carried out by his teacher.
It's a decent novel…in scope and attempt it's near [b:The Heart's Invisible Furies|33253215|The Heart's Invisible Furies|John Boyne|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1490803456l/33253215._SY75_.jpg|51438471]. But in execution, it's somewhat lacking. Precisely what, remains difficult to name. It's missing a beating heart, or if you prefer a different metaphor, it's missing a soul. The problem really is in the decision-making McEwan had to have gone through in order to move Roland through his own life's span. There's a huge opportunity McEwan misses, or more accurately avoids. The resistance Roland has for bringing his piano teacher Miriam Cornell to any level of accountability beyond confrontation is natural, but the complete assumption that it has been fully expelled from him (by his own accounting) is grossly miscalculated. Intentional, by McEwan, I assume, but a complete disservice to the story...and the reader.
A giant and catastrophic societal problem with sexual abuse, where the abuser is an adult female, usually a teacher, and the abused is an underage male teen, has forever been disregarded as equal to the destructive abuse were the genders reversed. Often with the bizarre attempt to misclassify it as a consensual and mutual affair, by way of bandying about awful reinforcing phrases of what teenage boy wouldn’t want that? Or, even worse, when it's looked at as a scored point for the boy. Whereas the male teacher, engaging in an underage sexual encounter with a female teen student, is quickly labeled a pedophile, accused of grooming, and is easily fired and prosecuted.
I kept hoping, as I continued to read, that Roland's abuser would be addressed appropriately, and acknowledged fully and formally, but McEwan holds Roland to an old and infuriating school of passivity. At bare minimum, I wanted Roland to come to terms with this scarring time in his life through therapy, or some level of self-reflection and inner exploration once he had acquired his adult lenses and the benefit of hindsight.
By his own admission early on, Roland admits that he never gave any thought to ask the other boys learning piano from Miss Cornell if they received the same abuse. Again, decades later, when the opportunity arises by way of a poem he had written years before alerts a police officer to the criminal affair and opens a case, Roland never once responds, by word or action, to the officer's statement, "If you came forward, it would help others. Men and boys."
Sadly, Roland remains so entirely passive, the guts of the novel and Roland's story are laid bare as the tale of a specter of a man, grumbling through his own life, occasionally rattling chains, but otherwise, quiet in the attic of his own existence.
I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This affected neither my opinion of the book nor the content of my review.
Many reviewers have, I know, quit this one either early on or well into it. And I get it, Lessons had a tough and obscure entry point — often when it appeared to open up, the narrative would seemingly shut down or shove the reader out. In fact, it wasn't until well over halfway through that I felt a steadier connection to Roland and his story. Even then, I felt as though the story almost didn't know where it was going and might wander off at any moment.
While McEwan's writing is as dependably excellent as ever, the narrative does lose itself quite often and overstays its welcome during certain global periods. If Roland played a more active role in his own life, it might have made a better balance of personal and world-affecting, but things only happen to Roland and he barely ever responds. While his dopey passivity might be true for many in real life and his own character, that does not mean it necessarily makes for an engaging or enthralling story.
The problem is that Roland isn't an Everyman; he's no man. A mere wisp of a full person … ghostly in his own story with historical mile markers as waypoints.
This is, for the majority of the book, a fog of a story. But I do wonder then if that is reflective of the man around whom this yarn had been spun? Roland comes blazing through childhood and early adolescence full of potential. Is his meandering life that follows just reflective of his personality, inevitably? Or is it tied more closely to his childhood trauma, a trauma it takes a long time to acknowledge as such. His sexual abuse, perpetuated by his piano teacher, is tangled up with teenage discoveries of sexual experiences…his joy, the thrills, his part-boy / part-man self unable at the time to see it clearly for the horrible behavior exhibited and carried out by his teacher.
It's a decent novel…in scope and attempt it's near [b:The Heart's Invisible Furies|33253215|The Heart's Invisible Furies|John Boyne|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1490803456l/33253215._SY75_.jpg|51438471]. But in execution, it's somewhat lacking. Precisely what, remains difficult to name. It's missing a beating heart, or if you prefer a different metaphor, it's missing a soul. The problem really is in the decision-making McEwan had to have gone through in order to move Roland through his own life's span. There's a huge opportunity McEwan misses, or more accurately avoids. The resistance Roland has for bringing his piano teacher Miriam Cornell to any level of accountability beyond confrontation is natural, but the complete assumption that it has been fully expelled from him (by his own accounting) is grossly miscalculated. Intentional, by McEwan, I assume, but a complete disservice to the story...and the reader.
A giant and catastrophic societal problem with sexual abuse, where the abuser is an adult female, usually a teacher, and the abused is an underage male teen, has forever been disregarded as equal to the destructive abuse were the genders reversed. Often with the bizarre attempt to misclassify it as a consensual and mutual affair, by way of bandying about awful reinforcing phrases of what teenage boy wouldn’t want that? Or, even worse, when it's looked at as a scored point for the boy. Whereas the male teacher, engaging in an underage sexual encounter with a female teen student, is quickly labeled a pedophile, accused of grooming, and is easily fired and prosecuted.
I kept hoping, as I continued to read, that Roland's abuser would be addressed appropriately, and acknowledged fully and formally, but McEwan holds Roland to an old and infuriating school of passivity. At bare minimum, I wanted Roland to come to terms with this scarring time in his life through therapy, or some level of self-reflection and inner exploration once he had acquired his adult lenses and the benefit of hindsight.
By his own admission early on, Roland admits that he never gave any thought to ask the other boys learning piano from Miss Cornell if they received the same abuse. Again, decades later, when the opportunity arises by way of a poem he had written years before alerts a police officer to the criminal affair and opens a case, Roland never once responds, by word or action, to the officer's statement, "If you came forward, it would help others. Men and boys."
Sadly, Roland remains so entirely passive, the guts of the novel and Roland's story are laid bare as the tale of a specter of a man, grumbling through his own life, occasionally rattling chains, but otherwise, quiet in the attic of his own existence.
I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This affected neither my opinion of the book nor the content of my review.
Ian McEwan back to what he does best ... traditional fiction. But the book was interminable, its length and the staying power required to get through it only partially justified by his inimical brilliance. Just when you think you're nearing some sort of finale he leaps off on another digression from the main story that despite its engrossing nature often seems like an unapologetic harangue by the author on one or another of the subjects dear to his heart. Some of these in regard to authors and writing and whether or not a woman can become an international bestselling author unless she abandons home, hearth, husband and infant to beaver away in isolation are excellent fodder for further debate.
I struggled a lot with this book. I started it because someone recommended it saying they read it almost at one sitting! But I had to start reading 3 other books next to this or otherwise I could not make myself finish this one. So many unanswered questions and the main character doesn’t seem to be curious enough to find an answer for them
Lots of thoughts I might fill in later.
For now: feels like I should get three books credit to my yearly goal instead of one. :)
For now: feels like I should get three books credit to my yearly goal instead of one. :)
Unlike many of us, who, during the Covid lockdowns, did not venture beyond making bread and taking out the yoga mat, Ian McEwan wrote his 17th novel. As he comments in the accompanying note, there are many autobiographical elements, including his family history, and the timeline that his main character treads matches exactly his own. However, apart from being a family saga spanning 7+ decades it is also an account of many major political and socioeconomic events and changes as they have been experienced by him, his contemporaries and even his parents generation.
Liking an author is obviously a subjective matter and not all works need to be equally appealing. So, to the point for this book. Written in three parts, representing roughly the main character's adolescence, middle and old age, there are sections, especially in the third part, that I found reflective and thoughtful and simply brilliant, and just about enough to justify my 4 (and not 3) stars. The narrative is not linear at all, going back and forth in time. This however, is not a superficial creative construct to tell the story but rather a means for the main character to revisit events and retrieve memories and look at his life from different perspectives, which I thought worked very well. The problem for me was large sections referring to events that either had nothing to do with the main character or were detailed to such extent that detracted from the main story. As much as I appreciate, and I think I understand, the intention of describing one's life (and "lessons learned") within the environment and everything else that takes place, lack of focus, especially in the first part of the book made me wonder where this was going .... and for a 500page book this is not a good feeling.
Some final random thoughts: A strange choice to have two pivotal female characters, which McEwan clarifies that are fictional, as
(a) a clearly disturbed young woman in her early twenties, a teacher in a boarding school, who sexually abuses a child and
(b) a darker and angrier version of a Doris Lessing character who writes about people but cannot love or show compassion for anyone, not even her child.
Liking an author is obviously a subjective matter and not all works need to be equally appealing. So, to the point for this book. Written in three parts, representing roughly the main character's adolescence, middle and old age, there are sections, especially in the third part, that I found reflective and thoughtful and simply brilliant, and just about enough to justify my 4 (and not 3) stars. The narrative is not linear at all, going back and forth in time. This however, is not a superficial creative construct to tell the story but rather a means for the main character to revisit events and retrieve memories and look at his life from different perspectives, which I thought worked very well. The problem for me was large sections referring to events that either had nothing to do with the main character or were detailed to such extent that detracted from the main story. As much as I appreciate, and I think I understand, the intention of describing one's life (and "lessons learned") within the environment and everything else that takes place, lack of focus, especially in the first part of the book made me wonder where this was going .... and for a 500page book this is not a good feeling.
Some final random thoughts: A strange choice to have two pivotal female characters, which McEwan clarifies that are fictional, as
(a) a clearly disturbed young woman in her early twenties, a teacher in a boarding school, who sexually abuses a child and
(b) a darker and angrier version of a Doris Lessing character who writes about people but cannot love or show compassion for anyone, not even her child.
This book could be described as an introspective journey through one man’s life over 60 years.
The novel begins in 1986 when Roland Baines is 37 years old. His wife Alissa has just left him and their seven-month-old son Lawrence to pursue a writing career. This abandonment, which forces him into single parenthood, starts him thinking about his thereto restless, “shapeless existence” and what has caused him to live so aimlessly. Since abruptly ending his formal education at 16, he has been adrift; after a decade spent travelling around the world while engaged in less than meaningful relationships, he married but lacks steady employment. The novel shows Roland trying to understand himself and come to terms with his past while struggling through life, sometimes successfully and sometimes less so, and trying to learn its lessons.
The book examines how formative experiences and global events shape people’s lives: Roland “reflected on the events and accidents personal and global, minuscule and momentous that had formed and determined his existence.” Roland’s experiences as a child and teenager seem to have left him living much of his life with the hope that “What he once had, he had to have again.” For instance, a “rapturous week” of unfettered freedom and play as a child has left him with “a notion of impossible freedom and adventure [which] still spoiled him for the present” and a feeling that “His real life, the boundless life, was elsewhere.” As a result, he rejected opportunities and avoided commitments and salaried employment “to remain at large” and be available for the next adventure. His boarding school experience has also impacted his life. At the age of 11, he was dropped off at a boarding school in England while his parents removed themselves physically and emotionally by returning to Libya. He attracts the attentions of Miriam Cornell, a piano teacher, whose relationship with him “rewired [his] brain.” He concludes that he has drifted “through an unchosen life, in a succession of reactions to events. He had never made an important decision.”
Of course, others too are impacted by formative experiences. Alissa believes her life was scarred by a childhood spent around her mother’s sense of failure and bitterness so she takes decisive steps not to lead her mother’s “second-rate life.” Though not aware of his mother’s past until much later, Roland learns that her life had been framed by a “distant sorrow that hung about her and what she grieved for.”
Global events can also be traumatic, and Roland’s personal life is set against the Cuban Missile Crisis, the fall of the Berlin Wall, Chernobyl, the 9/11 attacks, Brexit, and the COVID pandemic. These events over which he has no control all impact his life and influence his behaviour. The possibility of annihilation during the Cuban missile crisis, for instance, motivates Roland to lose his virginity while the possibility of radiation from Chernobyl has him taking extra precautions to protect himself and Lawrence. And the reader is told about Alissa’s mother and Roland’s parents whose lives show that “Nothing forces public events on private lives like a war.”
The novel also examines whether it is possible to fulfill fully our needs and desires without hurting others. Roland attends a lecture on the topic of the ruthlessness of artists, the presenter asking whether we should “forgive or ignore their single-mindedness or cruelty in the service of their art” or “Whether cruel behaviour enabled great or execrable poetry made no difference. A cruel act remained just that.” Alissa abandons her husband and son to become a writer. Though her novels are lauded, her choices affect others: “If [Alissa’s mother] had harmed her daughter, what of the harm that daughter had done her son?” Should she be forgiven? And if she were a man, would she be condemned so harshly? Certainly Alissa’s fate at the end versus Roland’s is thought-provoking.
Roland is not always a likeable character. At times, he seems full of self-pity as he considers the roads not taken. He does redeem himself, however, because he does experience personal growth. Though “he thought that he hadn’t learned a thing in life and he never would,” he does become more generous in his views and sees that “They were all doing their best to get by with what they had.” Though he understands that “our beginnings shape us and must be faced,” he also knows that he should be grateful because “The accidental fortune was beyond calculation to have been born” when and where he was. Perhaps the most important lesson is that we “must go on trying to understand . . . and it would never end.”
This is a dense book and there is much in it, much more than I can discuss here. The one part I did not enjoy is the discussions of British politics, though, admittedly, my ignorance of that topic affected my enjoyment of those sections. The discussion of the White Rose movement in Germany became tedious, though I do admit to doing some further research because I wasn’t aware of that resistance group.
This is not my favourite McEwan novel, but I certainly recommend it to fans of his work. I will certainly continue to read his books and, should time allow, probably re-read this one.
Note: I received a digital galley from the publisher via NetGalley.
(I recently read Julian Barnes’ latest novel, Elizabeth Finch, and could not but notice Ian McEwan giving his protagonist similar views to EF: “’Christianity had been the cold dead hand on the European imagination. . . . It buried the open-minded philosophies of classical antiquity for an age, it sent thousands of brilliant minds down irrelevant rabbit holes of pettifogging theology. It had spread its so-called Word by horrific violence and it maintained itself by torture, persecution and death.’” Is there something in the air or water in England?)
Please check out my reader's blog (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/) and follow me on Twitter (@DCYakabuski).
The novel begins in 1986 when Roland Baines is 37 years old. His wife Alissa has just left him and their seven-month-old son Lawrence to pursue a writing career. This abandonment, which forces him into single parenthood, starts him thinking about his thereto restless, “shapeless existence” and what has caused him to live so aimlessly. Since abruptly ending his formal education at 16, he has been adrift; after a decade spent travelling around the world while engaged in less than meaningful relationships, he married but lacks steady employment. The novel shows Roland trying to understand himself and come to terms with his past while struggling through life, sometimes successfully and sometimes less so, and trying to learn its lessons.
The book examines how formative experiences and global events shape people’s lives: Roland “reflected on the events and accidents personal and global, minuscule and momentous that had formed and determined his existence.” Roland’s experiences as a child and teenager seem to have left him living much of his life with the hope that “What he once had, he had to have again.” For instance, a “rapturous week” of unfettered freedom and play as a child has left him with “a notion of impossible freedom and adventure [which] still spoiled him for the present” and a feeling that “His real life, the boundless life, was elsewhere.” As a result, he rejected opportunities and avoided commitments and salaried employment “to remain at large” and be available for the next adventure. His boarding school experience has also impacted his life. At the age of 11, he was dropped off at a boarding school in England while his parents removed themselves physically and emotionally by returning to Libya. He attracts the attentions of Miriam Cornell, a piano teacher, whose relationship with him “rewired [his] brain.” He concludes that he has drifted “through an unchosen life, in a succession of reactions to events. He had never made an important decision.”
Of course, others too are impacted by formative experiences. Alissa believes her life was scarred by a childhood spent around her mother’s sense of failure and bitterness so she takes decisive steps not to lead her mother’s “second-rate life.” Though not aware of his mother’s past until much later, Roland learns that her life had been framed by a “distant sorrow that hung about her and what she grieved for.”
Global events can also be traumatic, and Roland’s personal life is set against the Cuban Missile Crisis, the fall of the Berlin Wall, Chernobyl, the 9/11 attacks, Brexit, and the COVID pandemic. These events over which he has no control all impact his life and influence his behaviour. The possibility of annihilation during the Cuban missile crisis, for instance, motivates Roland to lose his virginity while the possibility of radiation from Chernobyl has him taking extra precautions to protect himself and Lawrence. And the reader is told about Alissa’s mother and Roland’s parents whose lives show that “Nothing forces public events on private lives like a war.”
The novel also examines whether it is possible to fulfill fully our needs and desires without hurting others. Roland attends a lecture on the topic of the ruthlessness of artists, the presenter asking whether we should “forgive or ignore their single-mindedness or cruelty in the service of their art” or “Whether cruel behaviour enabled great or execrable poetry made no difference. A cruel act remained just that.” Alissa abandons her husband and son to become a writer. Though her novels are lauded, her choices affect others: “If [Alissa’s mother] had harmed her daughter, what of the harm that daughter had done her son?” Should she be forgiven? And if she were a man, would she be condemned so harshly? Certainly Alissa’s fate at the end versus Roland’s is thought-provoking.
Roland is not always a likeable character. At times, he seems full of self-pity as he considers the roads not taken. He does redeem himself, however, because he does experience personal growth. Though “he thought that he hadn’t learned a thing in life and he never would,” he does become more generous in his views and sees that “They were all doing their best to get by with what they had.” Though he understands that “our beginnings shape us and must be faced,” he also knows that he should be grateful because “The accidental fortune was beyond calculation to have been born” when and where he was. Perhaps the most important lesson is that we “must go on trying to understand . . . and it would never end.”
This is a dense book and there is much in it, much more than I can discuss here. The one part I did not enjoy is the discussions of British politics, though, admittedly, my ignorance of that topic affected my enjoyment of those sections. The discussion of the White Rose movement in Germany became tedious, though I do admit to doing some further research because I wasn’t aware of that resistance group.
This is not my favourite McEwan novel, but I certainly recommend it to fans of his work. I will certainly continue to read his books and, should time allow, probably re-read this one.
Note: I received a digital galley from the publisher via NetGalley.
(I recently read Julian Barnes’ latest novel, Elizabeth Finch, and could not but notice Ian McEwan giving his protagonist similar views to EF: “’Christianity had been the cold dead hand on the European imagination. . . . It buried the open-minded philosophies of classical antiquity for an age, it sent thousands of brilliant minds down irrelevant rabbit holes of pettifogging theology. It had spread its so-called Word by horrific violence and it maintained itself by torture, persecution and death.’” Is there something in the air or water in England?)
Please check out my reader's blog (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/) and follow me on Twitter (@DCYakabuski).
Ian McEwan has long been on my to read list. Lessons is the first of his books I am reading. Certain books leave a feeling that perhaps the reader is not "clever" enough to follow or understand the depths the author is trying to reach. To me, that is not a fault of the book but an indication that I am not the reader for the book. Perhaps, I will try a different book by the author. Perhaps not. This one was not for me.
Read my complete review at http://www.memoriesfrombooks.com/2024/06/lessons.html
Reviewed for NetGalley.
Read my complete review at http://www.memoriesfrombooks.com/2024/06/lessons.html
Reviewed for NetGalley.