Lessons, Ian McEwan, author; Simon McBurney, narrator
This story spans decades. As it travels back and forth in time, covering the current events and how people deal with them, a great many characters are introduced. Varied themes are also introduced, making it hard to follow at times. Soldier on, because the novel is very well worth the read. It covers an assortment of friends, family and prominent people, all multifaceted, and illustrates how each one experiences and deals with life and death decisions.
Roland Blaines was sent to a boarding school when he was eleven years old. Adrift and lonely, he becomes involved with his piano teacher, Miriam Cornell, who was able to mesmerize and control him. Although he cares deeply for her, it is a very inappropriate relationship that profoundly influences his entire life.
Eventually, Roland frees himself from Miriam. He meets Alissa Eberhardt. They fall in love and marry. Roland is a musician and a writer, but Alissa is more serious in her desire to be an author. She becomes very beloved and successful, but only after she abandons Roland and their newborn son to follow her career. Roland raises their son Lawrence by himself.
As time passes, Roland wonders at the success of others. He searches for answers in relationships and extracurricular activities. He never achieves much success as a writer; he is busy raising Lawrence and searching for his elusive purpose and fulfillment. He travels, socializes and studies.
Enter Daphne, a married woman with whom he falls in love. When she is free, they marry. Their relationship is short-lived, and when he loses her, he flounders. Quietly, he drifts and questions the meaning of life. Roland studies his own memories, when he witnesses his mother’s loss of her memory.
All of Roland’s relationships, his friends, his family and his lovers, have lives fraught with issues. Is anyone’s life really perfect? These issues and how they are explored are what makes this novel so interesting, even if it is confusing at times with its tangents and myriad number of characters. The reader witnesses how they all process the current events they face, in their individual time frames, and watches as they deal with them effectively or sadly, fail. Their courage, bravery and thoughtfulness are examined, as traumatic current events, like the Holocaust, the anti-Nazi White Rose Movement, the Vietnam War, the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant disaster, the Covid 19 Pandemic, and other illnesses that we are all heir to, appear on the pages of the book. The reader experiences, with the characters, what they are going through in order to survive.
Through these characters and the myriad number of events, we learn about how Roland deals with life, and as we consider his philosophy, we also consider how we deal with the traumatic events in own lives. As we learn about Roland’s views about America, as well as his politics, his social conscience, and his struggles, our own thoughts about life intrude into our consciousness.
The issues of the day have invaded his life and ours, and as he must deal with them, so must we. Is there a right and wrong way? Is one side right and one side wrong or is there a compromise solution? Roland is against the Vietnam War, afraid of the radiation coming from Russia’s nuclear plant meltdown, aware that he is getting old and becoming less relevant to those around him. He notices that rather than he being preoccupied with worrying about them, they are now worrying about him. Isn’t this something we will all face?
As Roland makes his way through life, searching for answers, he learns about family secrets. His life seems to be a roller coaster of ups and downs, but in the end, Roland learns about love, sacrifice and loyalty. He understands that life has so much more to offer than he realized. As he ages, he grows wiser and concentrates more on the upside of life, even as it shortens its horizon. He recognizes there are things he simply cannot change.
The novel explores the many kinds of lessons we all learn and have to face. Roland learns that it is best to pick oneself up, dust oneself off, and go on with a smile. While I really enjoyed the story, even with its many tangents, it was often a bit too wordy, sometimes making me lose the sense of continuity.