LESSONS (2022)
By Ian McEwan
Alfred A. Knopf, 438 pages.
★★★
Ian McEwan is a superb writer, yet Lessons too often reads like he’s writing to dazzle rather than being faithful to the story. It is, though, a whale of a story. Roland Baines is a dilettante who has held a series of dead-end jobs, all of which were a come down for someone once pegged a brilliant pianist.
Roland has abandonment issues and deep insecurities around women. His mother split when he was a child and left him to the non-affectionate care of his military father, Robert (“The Major”). But this was nothing compared to what Roland experienced from his private school piano teacher, Miriam. She sexually fondled him when he was 11, and became her private student/lover/sex slave at age 14. (She was 26.) Miriam kept him in pajamas and wouldn’t allow him to play the music he really loved: jazz. Roland eventually gave up his concert pianist plans and dropped out of school.
Things never seem to go right for the passive Roland. At one point he realizes that he “has never made an important decision,” other than quitting school. This sprawling novel takes us from the 1940s, through the Thatcher years, and into the 21st century. Roland is fluent in German and acquires a younger wife, Alissa, whom he met during the fall of the Berlin Wall. Everything seems to fill him with regret or go south. He had friends in East Germany whose fate is unknown and you can imagine how disgusted he, a democratic socialist, was with Thatcher, Tony Blair, and Brexit. Alissa abandons him as well; though he’s sure she’s in Germany, local police think he may have killed her. He will even get the shaft two times over from a former bandmate who was once his best friend. About the beat that can be said that Roland is a pretty good dad to his son Lawrence.
Alissa is indeed in Germany, where she establishes herself as an important feminist writer and makes it known that she wants no relationship with Roland or Lawrence. When Roland finally finds love late in life, she dies, and there is a battle royal over who owns her ashes. It’s not a pretty portrait. Roland is 70, has lost his second wife and his brother, has no savings, and is living on a meagre state pension. He’s not jealous of Alissa’s success–he even edits her books–but she grows into an embittered narcissist with health issues and is not the sort who can be grateful.
Get the picture? Maybe not. There’s a lot going on in Lessons and, frankly, it’s often too much. Not only are there a lot of characters, there are also loads of themes. McEwan raises questions about abuse, for instance. If you’ve ever seen any of Michael Apted’s brilliant 7 Up documentaries you will recall that he said that if you give him a boy at the age of seven, “I will give you the man.” The age might be debatable, but imagine the obstacles faced by a child abandoned by his mother and sexually abused. Yeah, he might find it hard to get his life together.
McEwan also gives us a look at repeating patterns of desertion, rejection, family scandals, and things that can be forgiven and not. McEwan’s use of a male sexual abuse victim is a gusty device in the age of #MeToo, but a needed reminder that no one holds a monopoly on trauma. Though some might bristle, McEwan was also bold to cast women as the irresponsible actors in his novel. Alissa is especially unlikable; she’s driven, but her feminism is cold-hearted and shrill.
McEwan is a literary stylist, but this does not always serve him well. Too many beautifully written passages are discursive asides that break the narrative flow. He wants to get us inside of Roland’s psyche, but I’m not sure this works in a novel that spans eight decades of his protagonist and detours even deeper into the past. Much of the novel is episodic, appropriate for Roland’s rolling stone nature, but it also splashes in the shallows where plumbing the depths is in order. The ironically names Lessons (Roland has trouble learning them!) is impressive. It is a good novel? About half, in my estimation.
Rob Weir
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