This 2022 novel by Ian McEwan has been in my ‘to read’ pile since its publication, as I’ve enjoyed many of McEwan’s previous works: Saturday, Nutshell, The Cement Garden, The Innocent, The Child in Time, Machines Like Me, and The Cockroach have all previously been mentioned on this site.

I was a little put-off reading Lessons because I’d seen it described as a novel which featured a life story, also reflecting events in society from the late 1950s to the present day. This sort of novel is rarely well-written.

The central character of Lessons is Roland. We meet him aged 14 entering a sexual relationship with his piano teacher, in her mid-20s. From there, we follow him through the rest of his life: through love, marriage, single fatherhood, loneliness, and more. It’s tremendously ambitious and pulls off the trick of feeling genuinely biographical.

Roland is a drifter, someone who reacts to events around him rather than recognising his agency. This is frustrating on two levels. It’s sort of ‘good frustrating’ in terms of providing some narrative bite, but also ‘bad frustrating’, in the total lack of recognition of the background of privilege required to live in that way. If I wasn’t so predisposed by previous work to like McEwan, I’d say this was evidence of a desperate lack of awareness… but having read his previous works, I’m chalking it up to being a satirical choice he’s made with the narrative voice.

I have other nits to pick too. This isn’t a book where every word counts: it’s a baggy novel that felt like it could have been tightened up. In particular, I was frustrated by McEwan’s attempt to make this a sort of ‘state of the nation’ novel by frequently referencing contemporary news events. This could have been mostly excised without loss.

Yet, overall, this was excellent. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.