Lessons
Roland Baines, aged 11, arrives in England with his parents. Having lived in Libya, his father in the British army posted there, Roland has had little experience of life in the UK before. It is 1960, and he is to attend a private school in Suffolk. There he suffers sexual abuse from his piano teacher, Miriam Cornell, which has a major effect upon his life. The narrative is not linear and jerks around from the past to Roland’s present in 1986, when his wife, Alissa, has unexpectedly left him and his baby son in London to live in mainland Europe, where she becomes a renowned writer. There are accounts of times before Roland’s birth, in particular experiences of his wife’s mother, who travelled to Munich in 1946, with the aim of writing a paper on the anti-Nazi White Rose resistance group and ended up marrying one of the survivors of the movement, Heinrich Engelhardt, who had a marginal role.
It is difficult to resist the temptation to see elements of Ian McEwan’s own life in the story (with his father a Scotsman in the military and his peripatetic childhood spend abroad, as well as attending a private boarding school in Suffolk) and wonder how much of Roland Baines’ emotions and feelings reflect those of the author. Baines is also a writer, albeit a comparatively unknown and unproductive poet, and the story takes the form of reminiscences as Baines reflects upon his life in the second half of the turbulent 20th century. At times, the narrative appears to be a resumé of social and political history, as global events are tied closely into Roland’s life, which can read a little pedestrian at times in the middle part of the book. The pace picks up again as Roland enters old age. McEwan is a highly talented writer, and this novel is certainly worth reading.
