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3.86 AVERAGE
3.86 AVERAGE
emotional
hopeful
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I don’t think I’m the target audience for this book of I’m being honest. I haven’t lived enough life to recognise whether what McEwan is saying has a profound and real meaning or not.
I don’t know if this being semi-autobiographical makes me like it more or not. It is still too suspended from his own life to make it particularly sentimental (although I was a bit emotional knowing that the dedication was to all his siblings, including his long lost brother), but it most certainly would not be anywhere near as cohesive without his real experiences.
I feel like an awful person for saying that Roland’s experience with and the subsequent decades-long fallout from Miriam was the most interesting part of the book, but it’s true. Roland still cannot fully reckon with just how much damage her grooming of him had through the rest of his life, and seemingly he never does. I really hope Roland’s confusion and inability to separate (what he viewed as) love and her crime is just how unresolved it is and not McEwan saying it requires more nuance. Because it doesn’t. She was an paedophilic adult woman who groomed and sexually exploited her student from the age of 11. There is no leeway there. My concern is that by referring to them as, in a roundabout way, both complicit, McEwan is showing has not learned anything in the 21 years since Atonement was written where he called Lola and Briony just as complicit as Paul. The rapist and victim should never be presented as on equal standing in the matter. That makes me uncomfortable in rating this super highly.
However, I do believe Alessa’s transphobia is meant to be parodying JK Rowling and her insane black mould-driven rants. Thank you for that laugh.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, Pedophilia
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Novels like this appeal to me; novels that are the story of a life. It doesn’t fully matter the type of life - whether it is dull, exciting, weird, tragic, successful, or average. I just find it helpful and encouraging to read about it, in all its awkward humanity, because although each life is entirely different, they all contain common characteristics of struggle and joy (although in different ways). They all contain lessons.
This is a story of a common life, with all its twists and turns, and interactions with other people who encounter it. I like how the author creates and interprets his main character, Roland Baines, from youth to old age and the reflections he has on his experiences. This novel was also brilliant in how it tied to historical events over time. I particularly enjoyed some of the reflections on parenthood and the relationship between a parent and a child. From the very beginning of this novel, those were things that stuck with me.
“Against his chest he felt the baby’s heartbeat, just under twice the rate of his own. Their pulses fell in and out of phase, but one day they would always be out. They would never be this close. He would know him less well, then even less. Others would know Lawrence better than he did, where he was, what he was doing and saying, growing closer to this friend, then this lover…..Until then, he knew everything about him, where he was every minute, in every place….. The long letting go could be the essence of parenthood and from here was impossible to conceive.”
This is a story of a common life, with all its twists and turns, and interactions with other people who encounter it. I like how the author creates and interprets his main character, Roland Baines, from youth to old age and the reflections he has on his experiences. This novel was also brilliant in how it tied to historical events over time. I particularly enjoyed some of the reflections on parenthood and the relationship between a parent and a child. From the very beginning of this novel, those were things that stuck with me.
“Against his chest he felt the baby’s heartbeat, just under twice the rate of his own. Their pulses fell in and out of phase, but one day they would always be out. They would never be this close. He would know him less well, then even less. Others would know Lawrence better than he did, where he was, what he was doing and saying, growing closer to this friend, then this lover…..Until then, he knew everything about him, where he was every minute, in every place….. The long letting go could be the essence of parenthood and from here was impossible to conceive.”
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This one was hard work! I don’t think it’s necessary to put all your research into then final novel.
Music lessons as well as more general life lessons feature in this long novel, so the title is very apt. And there are lessons for readers here too—at least that was my experience.
That quote is not from this book but from the one I read just before it, Georgi Gospodinov's [b:Time Shelter|58999261|Time Shelter|Georgi Gospodinov|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1645247437l/58999261._SY75_.jpg|80554438]. I'm inserting it here because it's as if Gospodinov were talking about this exact book in the first part of that quote.
Lessons gives the impression of a writer who holds all the threads of the action firmly, and who is determined to serve us a narrative that is perfect both in order and form. And what's extra interesting is that Lessons delivers its carefully controlled narrative while at the same time roaming backwards and forwards through the very same decades that Gospodinov examines in his deliberately more chaotic but very nostalgia-inducing Time Shelter.
Many of the main political events in Europe between WWII and the present day are dealt with in both books, so that Lessons feels just as history focused and nostalgia driven as Time Shelter because the main character, Roland, is constantly striving to pin down and examine the past in a similar way to Gospodinov's narrator: Roland thought that those in his own country who itched to get back to...the nineteen fifties should think harder.
Was I more drawn to the order and form of McEwan's book than I was to the nebulous non-order of Gospodinov's?
I find that hard to decide. What I do know is that I was able to make complete sense of the fiction setting of Lessons whereas I struggled to understand Time Shelter's fictional world.
The fiction setting of Lessons concerns the many and varied lessons Roland Baines learns in his long life. Those lessons are all taught to him by women, and although Roland isn't the most noble of characters, those women, his mother, his music teacher, his ex-wife, are made to appear ignoble in the extreme. I wondered about that, about why McEwan seemed so bitter towards women in this book (and the one woman who is noble dies as soon as she becomes a main character).
I've often wondered what motivated certain aspects of Ian McEwan's novels over the many years I've been reading him. But in spite of not liking some of those aspects, I continue to read him because I've always admired his writing at the sentence level. Oddly, this is the first of his books in which I didn't stumble on fine phrases very frequently. I did find one eventually at the bottom of page 457, but that was a long time to wait in what was a very long book. In fact at one point, when Roland is reading the critics' opinions of his difficult ex-wife's latest novel—What was new was her exceptional prose, it's lyrical bitterness...Only she, they agreed, could manage so adroitly, with such delicate evocation of pain and anger, the many cross-currents of feeling, of mutual misunderstanding...—I found myself wishing that I was reading her novel (which sounded quite like a typical McEwan novel) instead of the book in my hand.
But the sober book in my hand was all I had so I made the best of it. And I learned a little lesson about how to read McEwan's novels without over interpreting them. It occurred when the difficult ex-wife asked Roland, Have I really got to give you a lesson in how to read a book? I borrow. I invent. I raid my own life. I take from all over the place, I change it, bend it to what I need. Ok, lesson learned.
Meantime, Roland is learning other lessons about reading : Decades later he was more generous. Less stupid....He believed it was extremely difficult to write a very good novel and to get halfway there was also an achievement. He deplored the way literary editors commissioned novelists rather than critics to review each other's work...His ignorant twenty-seven-year-old self would have sneered at Roland's favourites now. He was reading through a domestic canon that lay just beyond the great encampments of literary modernism. Henry Green, Antonia White, Barbara Pym, Ford Madox Ford, Ivy Compton-Burnett, Patrick Hamilton....
This was a side of Roland that appealed to me better—or was it McEwan talking, I wondered? Ok, I shouldn't over interpret. But still, the ex-wife also says, When a writer has been around long enough people begin to get tired. Even if she does something different every time. They say, She's doing something different—again! I couldn't help feeling that Ian McEwan was talking directly to his critics there. And just so you know, Ian, I've always admired how you treat a new subject in every new novel.
The aspect of this book that appealed to me most was the intertextuality. [b:Lolita|7604|Lolita|Vladimir Nabokov|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1377756377l/7604._SY75_.jpg|1268631] haunted the early sections, though the book itself was never mentioned. Flaubert's [b:L'Éducation sentimentale|1420825|L'Éducation sentimentale|Gustave Flaubert|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1356152703l/1420825._SY75_.jpg|314156], about a young man and his older lover, was also in my mind while reading, and McEwan did confirm that connection. I also thought of [b:Orlando Furioso|38154|Orlando Furioso|Ludovico Ariosto|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1385193032l/38154._SX50_.jpg|1161788] since Roland is a poet and driven crazy by love at some points in the novel. Conrad's [b:Youth|392274|Youth|Joseph Conrad|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1330401868l/392274._SY75_.jpg|691580] was in here too. And Elizabeth Hardwick's [b:Sleepless Nights|347413|Sleepless Nights|Elizabeth Hardwick|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1647044062l/347413._SY75_.jpg|1045351] was evoked very meaningfully, as was Doris Lessing's life and times in connection with the ex-wife's writing career. And although she wasn't mentioned, I was reminded of Muriel Spark's writing life—but not of her playfulness. Playfulness is something I never find in an Ian McEwan book. He is an utterly serious writer, which is ok when he's writing novellas, but when his books are as long as this one, I feel the need for him to take himself and his material a little less seriously.
But I'm sure he'll have a lesson for me on that subject in his next novel!
Novels and stories offer deceptive consolation about order and form. Someone is supposedly holding all the threads of the action, knowing the order and the outcome, which scene comes after which. A truly brave book, a brave and inconsolable book, would be one in which all stories, the happened and the unhappened, float around us in the primordial chaos, shouting and whispering, begging and sniggering, meeting and passing one another by in the darkness.
That quote is not from this book but from the one I read just before it, Georgi Gospodinov's [b:Time Shelter|58999261|Time Shelter|Georgi Gospodinov|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1645247437l/58999261._SY75_.jpg|80554438]. I'm inserting it here because it's as if Gospodinov were talking about this exact book in the first part of that quote.
Lessons gives the impression of a writer who holds all the threads of the action firmly, and who is determined to serve us a narrative that is perfect both in order and form. And what's extra interesting is that Lessons delivers its carefully controlled narrative while at the same time roaming backwards and forwards through the very same decades that Gospodinov examines in his deliberately more chaotic but very nostalgia-inducing Time Shelter.
Many of the main political events in Europe between WWII and the present day are dealt with in both books, so that Lessons feels just as history focused and nostalgia driven as Time Shelter because the main character, Roland, is constantly striving to pin down and examine the past in a similar way to Gospodinov's narrator: Roland thought that those in his own country who itched to get back to...the nineteen fifties should think harder.
Was I more drawn to the order and form of McEwan's book than I was to the nebulous non-order of Gospodinov's?
I find that hard to decide. What I do know is that I was able to make complete sense of the fiction setting of Lessons whereas I struggled to understand Time Shelter's fictional world.
The fiction setting of Lessons concerns the many and varied lessons Roland Baines learns in his long life. Those lessons are all taught to him by women, and although Roland isn't the most noble of characters, those women, his mother, his music teacher, his ex-wife, are made to appear ignoble in the extreme. I wondered about that, about why McEwan seemed so bitter towards women in this book (and the one woman who is noble dies as soon as she becomes a main character).
I've often wondered what motivated certain aspects of Ian McEwan's novels over the many years I've been reading him. But in spite of not liking some of those aspects, I continue to read him because I've always admired his writing at the sentence level. Oddly, this is the first of his books in which I didn't stumble on fine phrases very frequently. I did find one eventually at the bottom of page 457, but that was a long time to wait in what was a very long book. In fact at one point, when Roland is reading the critics' opinions of his difficult ex-wife's latest novel—What was new was her exceptional prose, it's lyrical bitterness...Only she, they agreed, could manage so adroitly, with such delicate evocation of pain and anger, the many cross-currents of feeling, of mutual misunderstanding...—I found myself wishing that I was reading her novel (which sounded quite like a typical McEwan novel) instead of the book in my hand.
But the sober book in my hand was all I had so I made the best of it. And I learned a little lesson about how to read McEwan's novels without over interpreting them. It occurred when the difficult ex-wife asked Roland, Have I really got to give you a lesson in how to read a book? I borrow. I invent. I raid my own life. I take from all over the place, I change it, bend it to what I need. Ok, lesson learned.
Meantime, Roland is learning other lessons about reading : Decades later he was more generous. Less stupid....He believed it was extremely difficult to write a very good novel and to get halfway there was also an achievement. He deplored the way literary editors commissioned novelists rather than critics to review each other's work...His ignorant twenty-seven-year-old self would have sneered at Roland's favourites now. He was reading through a domestic canon that lay just beyond the great encampments of literary modernism. Henry Green, Antonia White, Barbara Pym, Ford Madox Ford, Ivy Compton-Burnett, Patrick Hamilton....
This was a side of Roland that appealed to me better—or was it McEwan talking, I wondered? Ok, I shouldn't over interpret. But still, the ex-wife also says, When a writer has been around long enough people begin to get tired. Even if she does something different every time. They say, She's doing something different—again! I couldn't help feeling that Ian McEwan was talking directly to his critics there. And just so you know, Ian, I've always admired how you treat a new subject in every new novel.
The aspect of this book that appealed to me most was the intertextuality. [b:Lolita|7604|Lolita|Vladimir Nabokov|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1377756377l/7604._SY75_.jpg|1268631] haunted the early sections, though the book itself was never mentioned. Flaubert's [b:L'Éducation sentimentale|1420825|L'Éducation sentimentale|Gustave Flaubert|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1356152703l/1420825._SY75_.jpg|314156], about a young man and his older lover, was also in my mind while reading, and McEwan did confirm that connection. I also thought of [b:Orlando Furioso|38154|Orlando Furioso|Ludovico Ariosto|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1385193032l/38154._SX50_.jpg|1161788] since Roland is a poet and driven crazy by love at some points in the novel. Conrad's [b:Youth|392274|Youth|Joseph Conrad|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1330401868l/392274._SY75_.jpg|691580] was in here too. And Elizabeth Hardwick's [b:Sleepless Nights|347413|Sleepless Nights|Elizabeth Hardwick|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1647044062l/347413._SY75_.jpg|1045351] was evoked very meaningfully, as was Doris Lessing's life and times in connection with the ex-wife's writing career. And although she wasn't mentioned, I was reminded of Muriel Spark's writing life—but not of her playfulness. Playfulness is something I never find in an Ian McEwan book. He is an utterly serious writer, which is ok when he's writing novellas, but when his books are as long as this one, I feel the need for him to take himself and his material a little less seriously.
But I'm sure he'll have a lesson for me on that subject in his next novel!
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Well, how many good things can I say about this one? This is so big! McEwan has put a lot into this novel. To start with, there is the personal story of Roland Baines, from the age of 11 to deep in his 70s. Actually, Baines is what our society in general would call a 'loser', a man who just muddles along in life, wastes his remarkable intelligence and his talent as a pianist, but ultimately manages to win our hearts. And that's probably because Baines is all too aware of his shortcomings and failures, constantly reflects them, muses on how he could have done things differently, or on how he could have taken charge of his life instead of letting it go. In a sense, McEwan has created a variation on John Williams' [b:Stoner|166997|Stoner|John Williams|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1320600716l/166997._SY75_.jpg|1559207]: Baines and Stoner share the same passive, resigned attitude towards the vicissitudes of life.
Of course, there are some marked differences. And the most important one happens early in Baines' life: as a young teenager he became involved in what we would now clearly call a case of sexual abuse (by his female piano teacher). The result is that as a reader you wonder – all throughout the novel - whether Baines' impotence in life is the result of that early ‘damage’. But it testifies to the greatness of McEwan that he does not give a clear answer to this issue, even after more than 450 pages. It's as if he wanted to emphasize that perpetrator and victim are not as clearly delineated as we conveniently assume. The same goes for the character of Alissa, Baines' wife, who leaves him with their 6-month-old baby, just so she can pursue a successful writing career. But just as the piano teacher, also Alissa, whom you could easily see as a real bitch, isn't portrayed as the devil in disguise, on the contrary. In the end, almost all characters (with the exception of a really villainous Brexiteer) are victims of passions, ambitions and actions they can't control. Yes (I hear you thinking) a bit like in a Greek drama.
Another plus is that this novel, spread over constantly changing moments in time, gives a good overview of more than 75 years, from 1945 to 2020, with McEwan regularly zooming in on major world events such as the Cuban Missile Crisis or the fall of the Berlin Wall, up to and including the covid crisis. No wonder this book is so popular with boomers (myself included): it covers a lot of their lifes! And then there is the literary style: it is consistently of such a high level that you jump effortlessly from one time period to another, in and out of the head of Roland Baines and his vicissitudes. Yet at the same time, this novel is quite demanding for his reader: it has been a long time since I spent so long on a novel, such an intensity it offers at times. I guess in the meantime my message is clear: read this!
Of course, there are some marked differences. And the most important one happens early in Baines' life: as a young teenager he became involved in what we would now clearly call a case of sexual abuse (by his female piano teacher). The result is that as a reader you wonder – all throughout the novel - whether Baines' impotence in life is the result of that early ‘damage’. But it testifies to the greatness of McEwan that he does not give a clear answer to this issue, even after more than 450 pages. It's as if he wanted to emphasize that perpetrator and victim are not as clearly delineated as we conveniently assume. The same goes for the character of Alissa, Baines' wife, who leaves him with their 6-month-old baby, just so she can pursue a successful writing career. But just as the piano teacher, also Alissa, whom you could easily see as a real bitch, isn't portrayed as the devil in disguise, on the contrary. In the end, almost all characters (with the exception of a really villainous Brexiteer) are victims of passions, ambitions and actions they can't control. Yes (I hear you thinking) a bit like in a Greek drama.
Another plus is that this novel, spread over constantly changing moments in time, gives a good overview of more than 75 years, from 1945 to 2020, with McEwan regularly zooming in on major world events such as the Cuban Missile Crisis or the fall of the Berlin Wall, up to and including the covid crisis. No wonder this book is so popular with boomers (myself included): it covers a lot of their lifes! And then there is the literary style: it is consistently of such a high level that you jump effortlessly from one time period to another, in and out of the head of Roland Baines and his vicissitudes. Yet at the same time, this novel is quite demanding for his reader: it has been a long time since I spent so long on a novel, such an intensity it offers at times. I guess in the meantime my message is clear: read this!