Status
Available
Call number
Publication
Stockholm : Brombergs, 2023
Description
Fiction. Literature. When the world is still counting the cost of the Second World War and the Iron Curtain has descended, young Roland Baines's life is turned upside down. He is two thousand miles from his mother's protective love, stranded at an unusual boarding school, when his vulnerability attracts his piano teacher, Miriam Cornell, leaving scars as well as a memory of love that will never fade. Twenty-five years later, Roland's wife mysteriously vanishes, and he finds himself alone with their baby son. He is forced to confront the reality of his rootless existence. As the radiation from the Chernobyl disaster 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 and Cuban Missile crises and the fall of the Berlin Wall to the Covid 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�??literature, travel, friendship, drugs, sex, and politics. A profound love is cut tragically short. Then, in his final years, he finds love again in another form. His journey raises important questions. 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 learn from the traumas of the past? Epic, mesmerizing, and deeply humane, Lessons is a chronicle for our times�??apowerful meditation on history and contingency through the prism of one man's lif… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member Carmenere
This novel is an expansive story covering the lives of many people over a timespan covering a multitude of decades. There is no denying the exquisite prose of McEwan and his ability to weave characters and situations into a solid book.
The reader meets the main character, Poet Roland Baines, as he's
As he prepares for the inevitable poisonous gas he reminisces about his parents, his childhood, his wife and in a Forrest Gumpish sort of way, the many historical markers that left an impression on his life.
Although I count McEwan as one of my favorite authors I'm beginning to believe that for me, his shorter novels work best and, to this day, many have left a lasting impression. The wordiness of Lessons taught me a thing or two and that may be the point of Lessons. Life itself is a lesson.
The reader meets the main character, Poet Roland Baines, as he's
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waking from a dream like state. Memories of his dominatrix-like piano teacher when he was 11 years old gets the story off the ground. We will go back to those days but first he is reminded his wife has abandoned him and their baby son. Oh, and then there is a news report of a nuclear accident and the cloud is moving in their direction. As he prepares for the inevitable poisonous gas he reminisces about his parents, his childhood, his wife and in a Forrest Gumpish sort of way, the many historical markers that left an impression on his life.
Although I count McEwan as one of my favorite authors I'm beginning to believe that for me, his shorter novels work best and, to this day, many have left a lasting impression. The wordiness of Lessons taught me a thing or two and that may be the point of Lessons. Life itself is a lesson.
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LibraryThing member davidroche
Another book that I’d been saving for holidays and thank you to Vintage for the proof copy. Lessons by Ian McEwan unveils the life of Roland Baines, from his liaisons with his piano teacher as a young boy through his wife leaving him and their seven month old son to go back to Germany and become
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a great novelist. He muddles through a variety of jobs – from a hotel foyer pianist to a tennis coach for middle aged wannabes – and vaguely hopes for fulfilment through his relationships with the few around him who keep in touch. Will the past come back to interfere with the more comfortable final act that he is moving into? Set from the end of WWII to the present day, the backdrop of events takes influence over Roland’s life in familiar ways. This is McEwan at his best, with the back stories providing a solid structure and the characters drawn in fine detail with their flaws evident as a feature of their humanity. It’s a British Jonathan Franzen with more subtlety, less obvious jokes and a clever infusion of class. Show Less
LibraryThing member adrianburke
Roland is insufficiently present.
LibraryThing member Bananaman
Interesting, enlightening, thought provoking, poignant and entertaining... superb.
LibraryThing member Eyejaybee
It is interesting to see how novelists develop over the course of their career. In an uncharacteristically progressive move for such a conservative institution, my school had its own paperback bookshop which was managed by members of the Sixth Form, including me for a brief period. An obvious
Having started with a couple of collections of short stories ([First Love, Last Rites] and [In Between the Sheets]), in which the preponderance of what seemed unconventional sex particularly caught our teenage boys’ attention, McEwan moved on to novels, starting with [The Cement Garden]. These led to him being included in Granta’s ‘Best of Young British Writers’ list published in 1983. Now, almost forty years on, Ian McEwan is one of the grand old men of British … indeed, world literature.
This latest novel, considerably longer than most of his recent books, which might fairly almost have been deemed novellas and weighing in at around 500 pages. I don’t know to what extent it might be based on McEwan’s own life – it certainly covers a similar period, with Roland Baines, the protagonist, being born in the late 1940s, and living through worries about the Cuban Missile Crisis as he entered his teens, and then rejoicing in the fall of the Berlin Wall, and then learning to adapt to a post-Brexit world. The plot is far too involved to offer a decent synopsis here, but essentially it follows the Roland’s life, and allows him (or McEwan himself) to offer various observations on what befalls him.
I found it an excellent book – one of the best novels I have read this year, and I was caught up in it right from the start. Roland Baines is far from perfect as a character, and occasionally behaves badly, but he is essentially an empathetic figure. McEwan also captures the feel of the different times at which parts of the book are set with great sensitivity.
I might also add a note of personal significance for myself. I started keeping a formal list of the books that I read on 1 January 1980, and this book was number 5,000. I am glad that this milestone was achieved with such an excellent book.
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benefit was the opportunity to browse through the stock, but I was also grateful for the access to promotional material from the various publishers whose books we sold. That was how I first became acquainted with the name of Ian McEwan, whom Picador were promoting as one of their coming young writers. Having started with a couple of collections of short stories ([First Love, Last Rites] and [In Between the Sheets]), in which the preponderance of what seemed unconventional sex particularly caught our teenage boys’ attention, McEwan moved on to novels, starting with [The Cement Garden]. These led to him being included in Granta’s ‘Best of Young British Writers’ list published in 1983. Now, almost forty years on, Ian McEwan is one of the grand old men of British … indeed, world literature.
This latest novel, considerably longer than most of his recent books, which might fairly almost have been deemed novellas and weighing in at around 500 pages. I don’t know to what extent it might be based on McEwan’s own life – it certainly covers a similar period, with Roland Baines, the protagonist, being born in the late 1940s, and living through worries about the Cuban Missile Crisis as he entered his teens, and then rejoicing in the fall of the Berlin Wall, and then learning to adapt to a post-Brexit world. The plot is far too involved to offer a decent synopsis here, but essentially it follows the Roland’s life, and allows him (or McEwan himself) to offer various observations on what befalls him.
I found it an excellent book – one of the best novels I have read this year, and I was caught up in it right from the start. Roland Baines is far from perfect as a character, and occasionally behaves badly, but he is essentially an empathetic figure. McEwan also captures the feel of the different times at which parts of the book are set with great sensitivity.
I might also add a note of personal significance for myself. I started keeping a formal list of the books that I read on 1 January 1980, and this book was number 5,000. I am glad that this milestone was achieved with such an excellent book.
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LibraryThing member Opinionated
The long life of Roland Baines is shaped by the 3 most important women in his life; his mother, his wife… and his piano teacher. All three significantly transgress the norms of their times (and in the case of his piano teacher, the norms and indeed laws of any time). His mothers trangressions
Roland leads an underachieving, aimless and yet relatively satisfied life, played out against world events such as the Cuban Missile Crisis, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the mass dillusions of Brexit (all three, it is implied, proceeding directly from the other) with McEwan’s usual very detailed and historically immaculate digressions around all three subjects.
It’s an enormously satisfying piece of work; likeable, complex characters, moral questions handled with subtlety and nuance, never predictable and often funny. So highly recommended. Minus half a star though, because I just cannot quite believe in the piano teacher. Sexual obsession is one thing - imprisonment of a child, quite another. This is not to say that such things don’t happen; of course, they do, and the 1960s attitude would certainly have been for the boy to shrug it off and soldier on. But I just couldn’t stop myself hearing Rod Stewart’s “Maggie May” in the background - I couldn’t quite suspend disbelief
But still, highly recommended. Ian McEwan is always at his best when exploring the impact on a child of external events they have little, or no, control ove
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don’t become known to him until relatively late in life but still play a part in shaping him. The behaviour of his piano teacher has a much more direct impact - she grooms, traps, sexual abuses and imprisons him - and in escaping from these golden handcuffs (for Baines does not pretend he didn’t enjoy a lot of this) he abandons his education and his promising piano playing career. As for his wife - she walks out of the door one morning, abandoning him and their baby, to successfully pursue an artistic career, something men have often done but women hardly at all. Roland leads an underachieving, aimless and yet relatively satisfied life, played out against world events such as the Cuban Missile Crisis, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the mass dillusions of Brexit (all three, it is implied, proceeding directly from the other) with McEwan’s usual very detailed and historically immaculate digressions around all three subjects.
It’s an enormously satisfying piece of work; likeable, complex characters, moral questions handled with subtlety and nuance, never predictable and often funny. So highly recommended. Minus half a star though, because I just cannot quite believe in the piano teacher. Sexual obsession is one thing - imprisonment of a child, quite another. This is not to say that such things don’t happen; of course, they do, and the 1960s attitude would certainly have been for the boy to shrug it off and soldier on. But I just couldn’t stop myself hearing Rod Stewart’s “Maggie May” in the background - I couldn’t quite suspend disbelief
But still, highly recommended. Ian McEwan is always at his best when exploring the impact on a child of external events they have little, or no, control ove
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LibraryThing member oldblack
A long book, but really worth the time. Great piece of writing for me - perhaps this is especially the case for me as an aging man. Women may see things differently. At times I was confused by the time jumps and I thought McEwen was giving too much context and background and not enough of the main
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story but in the end he pulled everything together - not in a neat way, but showing how incredibly messy, disappointing and complex life is. Show Less
LibraryThing member LARA335
The life-story of a metropolitan baby-boomer. The novel begins with a husband being questioned by a policeman about his missing wife; the early life of his mother-in-law; undercurrents between his schoolboy-self and his piano teacher. So many summaries, I think it was around page 150 when there was
But this is Ian Mc.Ewan, and therefore he must be breaking the rules, and ‘telling’ rather than ‘showing’ on purpose. A purpose I can’t fathom, but can accept that the fault must be mine.
Once the novel - very slowly - settled down, I began to enjoy the romp through recent history, taking in everything from Blair to climate change & lockdowns.
In the not-too-distant past the tale of a boy being seduced by a young woman was the stuff of romantic love-songs, but in 2023 the stuff of police investigations. Oh how the times-are-a-changing. And I think McEwan’s snapshots of the last seventy years are an attempt to capture the flailing individual swept along by time. I can foresee this being read by future generations researching Boomer life.
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an actual conversation with speech-marks. Is this a murder-mystery, an historical novel, a rights-of-passage saga? If this were a first novel I would think the editor wasn’t doing her job, focusing her client.But this is Ian Mc.Ewan, and therefore he must be breaking the rules, and ‘telling’ rather than ‘showing’ on purpose. A purpose I can’t fathom, but can accept that the fault must be mine.
Once the novel - very slowly - settled down, I began to enjoy the romp through recent history, taking in everything from Blair to climate change & lockdowns.
In the not-too-distant past the tale of a boy being seduced by a young woman was the stuff of romantic love-songs, but in 2023 the stuff of police investigations. Oh how the times-are-a-changing. And I think McEwan’s snapshots of the last seventy years are an attempt to capture the flailing individual swept along by time. I can foresee this being read by future generations researching Boomer life.
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LibraryThing member otterley
This feels much longer than most of McEwan's books, which often delivered short, nasty shocks in exquisite language. This is exactly what Lessons does at the start. Fractured timelines, shocking sexual transgression, acute description, all link up to deliver an extraordinary start. But then comes
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then longeur of life. McEwan scruitises ordinary and extraordinary lives and the accidents and sacrifices that may, or may not, make both. Ebbs and flows of relationships are linked with comic or desperate episodes. Reconciliation may or may not be on the cards. This is the book of a writer in the later part of his career writing about a man through the vicissitudes of a life that is both ordinary and exceptional, maybe like most of us. Come for the fireworks of the beginning, stay for the slow burning embers of a well lived life. Show Less
LibraryThing member TimBazzett
While not a devotee of Ian McEwan, I was flat blown away by his hefty 500-page epic novel, LESSONS . (2022). It will appeal to anyone who appreciates fine writing, but I suspect people of my age group (I'm 80) will especially relish the story of Roland Baines, a boomer born to a British Army Major
Buy this is only a small kernel of the story McEwan's omniscient narrator tells in this sprawling tale of world wars and the many changes, historical, political, technological and cultural, that took place over the past 75 or 80 years. And those events and changes are all folded into the intimate details of the fractured family history of Roland Baines and his parents, grandparents, siblings and half-siblings, a history of long-kept secrets, cruelty and heartbreak.
But enough said. I know 500 pages is a major investment of time for any reader, but I savored every page. McEwen has obviously done his research, but he also lived through the times represented here, and then added fictionalized elements from his own life and family. I googled him, and he's just a few years younger than I am. And I was hooked from the Cuban Missile Crisis era of the book. His Roland Baines was fourteen then. I was eighteen and in the middle weeks of Basic Training with the US Army at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. A very tense and terrifying time. Hell yes, I remember.
This is one helluva good book. I loved it. My very highest recommendation.
- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER
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shortly after the close of the Second World War. He spent much of his childhood at army posts in Libya and Germany before being sent, at eleven, to a boys boarding school in England, where he spent the next five years. It was during the Cuban Missile Crisis that Roland rudely came of age, at the hands of his piano teacher, a woman eleven years older, in an abusive relationship that continued for two years, and was to have profound and far-reaching effects. He dropped out of school and spent years wandering the globe, unable to commit himself to either family or any one profession. An early marriage ends when his wife deserts him, leaving him to raise their son on his own, and he engages in numerous serial monogamous affairs, living on the edge of poverty for years. His wife, on the other hand goes on to become one of Germany's most famous writers.Buy this is only a small kernel of the story McEwan's omniscient narrator tells in this sprawling tale of world wars and the many changes, historical, political, technological and cultural, that took place over the past 75 or 80 years. And those events and changes are all folded into the intimate details of the fractured family history of Roland Baines and his parents, grandparents, siblings and half-siblings, a history of long-kept secrets, cruelty and heartbreak.
But enough said. I know 500 pages is a major investment of time for any reader, but I savored every page. McEwen has obviously done his research, but he also lived through the times represented here, and then added fictionalized elements from his own life and family. I googled him, and he's just a few years younger than I am. And I was hooked from the Cuban Missile Crisis era of the book. His Roland Baines was fourteen then. I was eighteen and in the middle weeks of Basic Training with the US Army at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. A very tense and terrifying time. Hell yes, I remember.
This is one helluva good book. I loved it. My very highest recommendation.
- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER
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Subjects
Awards
BookTube Prize (Octofinalist — Fiction — 2023)
NPR: Books We Love (2022)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
2022
Physical description
22 cm
ISBN
9789178092529