Instead, McEwan interrupts with unnecessary historical context (“In the new year, 2021, in a post-solstice eclipse, the third lockdown began, the US president was replaced amid turmoil and at midnight on 31 January Europe was left behind…”) and jibes about Brexit, Christianity, Islam and trans rights. But Roland’s story would have been more affecting had McEwan stuck to telling it and let history take care of itself. Roland wisely reflects: “In surveying a life it was inadvisable to acknowledge too much defeat” and it is in these kinds of observations that the novel is at its strongest. The final part is full of death and decrepitude and, while McEwan writes convincingly about the body’s deterioration (“Falling, in showers, out of bathtubs, on pavements, over carpet edges, off buses, down slopes was how many among the old started to die”), narrative drive is the real casualty. His Booker Prize winning Amsterdam (1998) and his celebrated Atonement (2001) were distinguished by, among other things, his unshowy prose style.īy contrast, Lessons feels self-indulgent and under-edited and, as it goes on, the problems mount. Reading Lessons, I tried to suppress the suspicion that McEwan had written a long novel simply to show that he had the stamina.
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