Ian McEwan. Master of suspense. Master of detail. Master of making the ‘everyman’ seem anything but ordinary. In 2019, he brought us The Cockroach – a Kafkaesque tale with an eye towards Brexit. This year he brings us Lessons – a gargantuan novel with an eye towards history, global and personal.

Lessons follows the character of Roland Baines. He goes from a boy piano prodigy at boarding school to an old man on the verge of becoming a total recluse. Lessons has everything you want in a novel: three-dimensional characters, love, loss, trauma, and history. It is the perfect end-of-the-year novel. But let me tell you, it took it out of me…

What I loved about the book:

• Roland’s non-linear storyline.
• McEwan’s dedication to Realism.
• McEwan’s delineation of Roland and Miriam’s highly complex relationship.
• Roland’s capacity to forgive.
• The way history and the different storylines complement one another.
• That the novel transcended what is meant by ‘lessons’.

What I didn’t like about the book:

• That it was, without question, a slow burner.
• That Roland was a stickler for letting prime opportunities pass him by.
• That I am still trying to work out the logic behind all the James Joyce references…

Lessons is not a read-in-one-sitting novel. Lessons is a novel for those who do not mind reading with a furrowed brow. It is a novel that asks us, while chronicling the life of one man, to look deeply at our own.

Will there ever be a theme or historical event that McEwan can’t tackle?