Ian McEwan is, without argument, one of the best novelists or our time. Lessons might be a blueprint of life, or just a chapter in the unwritten novel of the twenty first century, which Roland Baines, the protagonist, longs to read.
The novel covers Roland’s life, from first memories until old age. McEwan skillfully intertwines the history of the last century into his character’s lives, and those of us lucky enough to have lived through the same events relish the authenticity, factual as well as emotional. Sometimes, it was happening to us. Sometimes we were just distant observers. Along with a fair rendering of time, we are gifted with beautiful prose and fascinating characters. We have the pleasure of growing up and growing old with many of them. I highlighted pages of lines I loved, but as a woman of the age, this was one of my favorites. Describing his widowed mother, Roland says “... she had aged and shrunk, she couldn’t sleep, the skin under her eyes showed deep wrinkles like a walnut.”
This is a book to savor. It isn’t a quick and easy read and will need your attention and time. There are Lessons to learn if we are open to them.
