Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.86 AVERAGE
3.86 AVERAGE
Libya.
What a fabulous writer this man is. It’s a fascinating account of a man’s life from birth to his latter years. It is riveting. And it tells of the important news events that occurred in his lifetime: the world wars, the White Rose, the Cuban missile crisis, the Berlin Wall and its fall, Chernobyl, Covid, among other things. It’s a wonderful story that is truly about everything. Don’t rush this one.
What a fabulous writer this man is. It’s a fascinating account of a man’s life from birth to his latter years. It is riveting. And it tells of the important news events that occurred in his lifetime: the world wars, the White Rose, the Cuban missile crisis, the Berlin Wall and its fall, Chernobyl, Covid, among other things. It’s a wonderful story that is truly about everything. Don’t rush this one.
I enjoyed Lessons immensely. McEwan has always written shrewdly and explored complex themes such as love, morality, and the human condition. This time, he's weaved the entire span of a person's life embroidered with threads trailing off in every direction.
Jumping back and forth in time, the reader follows Roland - a distracted, drifting man whose 'shapeless existence' meanders through seventy years of daily mundanities set alongside immense global events and resists the imposition of any grand order of meaning.
More amorphous than his previous books, the novel shows how the formative event in Roland's life - revisited over hundreds of pages in multiple visits - has damaged his future relationships. Still, it also earnestly suggests the damage may be more ambiguous and less decisive than the usual traumas of McEwan's protagonists.
Excellent stuff!
⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
Jumping back and forth in time, the reader follows Roland - a distracted, drifting man whose 'shapeless existence' meanders through seventy years of daily mundanities set alongside immense global events and resists the imposition of any grand order of meaning.
More amorphous than his previous books, the novel shows how the formative event in Roland's life - revisited over hundreds of pages in multiple visits - has damaged his future relationships. Still, it also earnestly suggests the damage may be more ambiguous and less decisive than the usual traumas of McEwan's protagonists.
Excellent stuff!
⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
slow-paced
I love McEwan's writing. This decades long novel beginning with adult Roland, and travelling with him through his tumultuous teen years, his marriage, parenthood, communal, and love and death of loved ones was, while sometimes long winded, a delight in every word and phrase. Rolands discontent with life can directly be traced to his experiences with his preteen piano teacher. Experiences like that can alter how one views oneself and the world. Finally towards the end of his life he finds love, and meaning and with the help of his family becomes whole.
Almost gave this 5 stars but I did get fed up with it in places. A really interesting journey through the last 70 odd years (very similar as mine) and some poignant moments mixed in with times when he was ‘shouted’ at!
Ian McEwan has been one of my favourite writers for years, but this was disappointing. Nothing wrong with the often extraordinary writing, I just found sections of it dull. There is a particular storyline that is very poorly handled. Glad to have finished it.
I’ve read several other novels by this author and always forget quite how much he manages to affect me emotionally with every novel .Thos book is no exception I was deeply moved and tearful finding some sections on the book made me feel quite depressed.The author has a way of making you reflect on your own mortality and failings as you are engrossed in the story of similarly flawed people
He deals with the background story of what ultimately is child sexual abuse in a sensitive nuanced way that leaves the reader able to identify with both abuser and abused
I loved the way that the novel was able to show time by using actual news events I’d not seen this done quite so effectively before
The author switches focus from the dull mundane episodes of normal life to the giant world shattering events such as the Cold War and Chernobyl
I particularly loved the line “he wasted too much time envying his youth “ we all do this I had the immediate sense of deeply understanding this
I would recommend this book to lovers of the literary novel,this is a novel I might expect to see on the Mann Booker long list
I read an early copy of this book on NetGalley Uk the book is published by Random House Uk Vintage on 13th September 2022
He deals with the background story of what ultimately is child sexual abuse in a sensitive nuanced way that leaves the reader able to identify with both abuser and abused
I loved the way that the novel was able to show time by using actual news events I’d not seen this done quite so effectively before
The author switches focus from the dull mundane episodes of normal life to the giant world shattering events such as the Cold War and Chernobyl
I particularly loved the line “he wasted too much time envying his youth “ we all do this I had the immediate sense of deeply understanding this
I would recommend this book to lovers of the literary novel,this is a novel I might expect to see on the Mann Booker long list
I read an early copy of this book on NetGalley Uk the book is published by Random House Uk Vintage on 13th September 2022
see umar this is why you stick it out and finish books you don’t like. this was so good! i don’t think i’d be able to successfully recommend it to anyone bc it’s just about a british guy?? and like his life from childhood to old age ?? it’s really lovely though mcewan’s prose is gorgeous. some wack anti communist stuff and a good sprinkle of islamophobia were nasty but otherwise real good fun
doesn't it just make your chest heave!! the way the grand movements of history just occur on a random tuesday when you're at the doctor's office or picking up a library book,, and suddenly you are faced with the fact that your life is inseparable from History, from the Stories that will be told !!!!
McEwan has written a life's work, like Ernaux's The Years, and like Ernaux he shows us just how much a life can contain, all its personal and world-historical traumas and errors and hopes. it's dizzying, how simultaneously granular and massive the scale, but somehow with a masterful literary sleight of hand he manages to fit it into one life and its appendages.
McEwan has written a life's work, like Ernaux's The Years, and like Ernaux he shows us just how much a life can contain, all its personal and world-historical traumas and errors and hopes. it's dizzying, how simultaneously granular and massive the scale, but somehow with a masterful literary sleight of hand he manages to fit it into one life and its appendages.