Ian McEwan's Lessons

   Ian McEwans's Lessons is a brilliantly conceived novel that raises perennial "hot" issues playing out against the backdrop of a century of influential historical events.

     The writer's command of carefully crafted concrete language is at times awe-inspiring and in my humble opinion places McEwan in the league of a Shakespeare in the guise of prose writer.

     Many of us know how embarrassing is the experience, as a nine or ten year old, of wearing glasses for the first time: How strange, how uncomfortable, how shameful we might feel when our friends may make fun of us. Here's the description of young Roland's, the novel's protagonist, eye opening experience.

    A Revelation He called out in joy. The great shape of the oak leaped as though through an Alice in Wonderland mirror. Suddenly every separate leaf of the many thousand that covered the tree resolved into a brilliant singularity of color and form and glittering movement in the slight breeze, each leaf a subtle variation of orange, gold, pale yellow and lingering green against a deep blue sky. The tree, like the scores around it, had made a portion of the rainbow its own. The oak was an intricate giant being that knew itself. It was performing for him, showing off delightful in its new existence.

     By the author's admission, many autobiographical threads are carefully woven into the fabric of the text giving it a heartfelt authenticity.

     The novel is a character study of Roland Baines. Two major events dominate the 431 pages. Indeed, on the very first page an adult Roland Baines relates how at age 11, his aggressive 22 year old piano teacher initiates sexual advances during his lessons, Over the next few years the teacher-student relationship will blossom full grown at age 14 into a mutually consuming sexual obsession for the next two years. She so dominates him physically when they meet at her home for piano lessons. His fantasies are always on her and while his memories of his private school education are forgotten, her sexual madness and its effects on him seemingly surface for a lifetime.

   So, the very first lesson poses the question that can the effects of extreme sexual harassment (she locks up his money and clothing in a shed making Roland a 'prisoner' of her love passions) ever be erased and still yet forgiven?

   The second thread in the saga is the sudden vanishing of Roland's wife Alissa leaving Roland with their six month old son Lawrence with just a brief note on their bed's pillow "like a hotel's bitter chocolate. Don't try to find me. I'm OK. It's not your fault. I love you; this is for the good. I've been living the wrong life."

Ian McEwan Courtesy of Bookseller News 

   Over the next 15 years Roland makes many attempts to contact her all of which prove fruitless.

   Meanwhile, Alissa, becomes Germany's greatest writer and winner of many literary honors. Acting on a hunch, Roland "runs into her" the very day that the Berlin Wall is toppled in 1989; he follows her into an East Berlin alley and she gives him a manuscript of her latest work to read. It confirms she is an excellent writer.

   Many years later, during Covid lockdown, Alissa is bed ridden after an amputation and suffering from years of tobacco addiction, Roland receives her latest book from her agent; he is upset because he has every reason to believe it portrays him as a violent husband furnishing another reason for her running out on him and their son.

   So, it is natural to ask what lessons we learn about spousal/domestic cruelty (husband abuses wife or conversely wife abuses husband)? What are the restraints placed, if any, in alteration of real life events by a writer? And, of course is there any closure to all these issues?

   These questions and many more are raised by this novel.