![]() ![]() The novel toggles between Roland’s adolescence and the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, when he’s a 38-year-old poet, settled (or so he thinks) in London, and the married father of an infant son. His rich, dense new novel, Lessons, flips the script on “grooming”: In this case, a predatory older woman, Miriam Cornell, initiates a covert, “consensual” sexual relationship with 14-year-old Roland Baines, her piano student, at an English boarding school in 1962. He dives into moral quandaries at a moment when most authors play it safe, risking “cancellation” from Twitter mobs, willing to boldly go where few writers tread. His characters grapple with unexpected and often murky ethical choices. ![]() McEwan has never shied away from explosive topics. ![]() As with Carol Shields’s The Stone Diaries or Ali Smith’s seasonal quartet series, quotidian lives reflect the sweep and drama of history. His most famous work, Atonement (which was made into a feature film starring Keira Knightley and Saoirse Ronan), plays tricks with readers’ expectations. He mines current affairs-the here and now, the rearview mirror, and the just-over-the-horizon-steering readers through crises from the Blitz to 9/11 to the war in Iraq. A writer’s writer par excellence, Ian McEwan has long been lauded for his fearless imagination and exquisitely calibrated sentences. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |