Review lessons ian mcewan6/27/2023 When the family flees Africa for London, 11-year-old Roland is sent to a boarding school where he exhibits a prodigious piano talent and meets the young woman who will forever alter his life - Miriam Cornell. True, but McEwan’s imagination delivers plenty of family secrets and reflects on so many lessons unlearned in a world that’s clearly wobbling off its axis. Is Roland a suspect? From there we’re swept back in time to Roland’s upbringing in Libya with a stern father and a mother who cowered before him. A richly observed story that spans decades to recount lives of sometimes-noisy desperation. As in McEwans last novel, The Innocent (1990), the Berlin Wall plays an important symbolic role in this fictional meditation on evila pseudo-memoir written from a post-cold-war perspective. His wife, we’re told, has “vanished.” There’s a detective in the house, asking questions. True, but McEwan’s imagination delivers plenty of family secrets and reflects on so many lessons unlearned in a world that’s clearly wobbling off its axis. The news is filled with ominous headlines about a radiation cloud floating from Chernobyl toward Britain. When we first meet Roland Baines he is a new parent, struggling to his raise his son alone. “Roland occasionally reflected on the events and accidents, personal and global, minuscule and momentous that had formed and determined his existence.” That one sentence in Ian McEwan’s new novel, “Lessons,” nicely sums up the book. This cover image released by Knopf shows "Lessons" a novel by Ian McEwan.
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