A masterful depiction of how history - both personal and global - can affect the course of a person's life. McEwan's work charts the course of Roland's life in intricate and intimate detail yet manages to document a whole seven decades within the confines of a relatively short novel. Stories are interwoven and while lessons, as such, are learned by characters the central premise seems to be that we as humans never really come to understand anything. But that love, somehow, conquers all - for better or worse.

4,5 stars. In typical McEwan style this is emotionally raw and endlessly compelling. I rattled through the last two hundred pages in a day and whilst the start was slow and an uncomfortable read, the final part of the novel more than made up for it. His portrayal of terminal illness was perfect as was the resolution. The way the adult/minor and rape storyline was unpicked later on may not be satisfying but it's realistically messy and honest. I loved this.

Lessons by Ian Mc Ewan
The story of Roland Baines, a young father, who wakes to find his life is changed forever. His wife has left to find a new life elsewhere and left him and their seven month old son. Initially the police suspect that he has killed her but then postcards from his wife posted abroad demonstrate he has told the truth. It is at the time of the Chernobyl disaster and he becomes obsessed with the nuclear dust permeating his house.
Roland has had a privileged upbringing beginning life in Tripoli and then being sent to a minor boarding school in England. We hear about his strange relationship with his piano teacher and what life is like for this lost child.
As you read you are let into the inner life of many characters apart from Roland. Meanwhile Roland obsessively reviews his life and its failures. We are swept through his version of post war politics.
This novel is a journey through Roland‘s life and takes us from his life in Tripoli right through to him reaching his 70s and living with the restrictions Covid places upon his life. The novel is about life lessons; how world events, over which we have no control, impact on our lives.

It is exquisitely written as you would expect from this author and I found sections absolutely fascinating such as his early life and his relationship with his bullying soldier. The impact of these years remain and affect his later life.
I really enjoyed the sections in Germany where his mother in law investigated the White Rose organisation the situation, the dangers in East and West Berlin and the demolition of the Berlin Wall.

It is very well written but I did find that it dragged a bit in sections. I would still recommend the novel to others. Many thanks to Net Galley and the publishers for the opportunity to read this book in return for an honest review.

There aren’t many authors I’d willingly pick up a 500 page chunk for, but Ian McEwan is one of them. A masterful storyteller and writer, I’ve loved some of his previous work. His newest novel Lessons was published earlier this month.

Lessons is the life story of Roland Baines -
the extraordinary story of an ordinary man. The book opens with 11 year old Baines receiving a piano lesson from Miriam Cornell, who touches him inappropriately - the beginning of a poisonous relationship that coils itself around every aspect of Roland’s life for many years.

The story switches to 1986. Roland’s wife has walked out on him, leaving him to raise baby Lawrence alone as a single father. Roland reflects on his turbulent childhood and nomadic early adulthood, and is propelled forward into middle age, anchored by his son and by the women who come in and out of his life.

Expansive and ambitious in scope, dense and detailed in prose and historical context (WWII, Suez Canal, Cuban Missile Crisis, Chernobyl, fall of the Berlin Wall, New Labour, Brexit, Covid), Lessons takes the reader on a singular journey of what it means to live an ordinary life, to process trauma, to survive, and to contemplate death (premature or not) and old age.

Written in the third person - quite deliberately by McEwan who I read has said that he believes younger writers too often write in the subjective, narrow first person - not opening books up to the world - I found it to be brimming with compassion, heart and often, high tension.

History and the lessons we learn from it (arguably too few), our personal relationships and how they shape us (or re-wire our brains) forever, the sacrifices women make for the creation of art, shame as a touchpoint for the WWII generation, and the enduring nature of love and humanity are all themes explored by way of deep character study and layered storytelling.

I’ve read reviews that have described the book as too long - it is, and there are self-indulgent passages in there, espousing views on literary prizes and the like, but hey, if you’ve won the Booker, you probably have licence to ramble a bit and your editor is probably less likely to cull those passages.

There are sizeable portions of the book given over to discrete historical topics - notably Hans and Sophie Scholl and the Weisse Rose movement (peaceful resistance group in Munich University towards the end of WWII). This may be off-putting to some but I was completely absorbed and loved it (though I’ve read a biography on Sophie Scholl so had a particular interest).

Once I was around 100 pages in, I began to listen to the audiobook in tandem (it’s available on BorrowBox - all 17.5 hours of it). I find with larger books it helps me maintain momentum and with the right narrator (Simon McBurney is excellent), it brings the story to life. I then switched between the ebook and audiobook. My ebook is littered with passages I highlighted.

I would say this is worth the commitment if you like your books wordy, chunky, interspersed with historical context and written with empathy and humanity. I will be thinking about it for months. 4.5-5/5⭐️

*Many thanks to @vintagebooks and @penguinrandomhouse for an ARC. Lessons was published on 13 September 2022. As always, this is an honest review.*

Having never read an Ian McEwan book before, I wasn’t sure what to expect. In my head I’d grouped him with the ‘angry men’ genre of writing, and was a bit concerned that was going to be true after reading the first couple of pages. After the first couple of chapters though, I realised how wrong I was. This was a touching and sensitive story, and one that I loved throughout.

The alternating between private and public events gave the feel of an epic, but the characterisation, presumably because some of the book is based on McEwan’s life, felt subtle and realistic. This meant that when dramatic things did happen, they felt emotionally devastating. I loved the book and will definitely be going back to McEwan now to raid the back catalogue!

I just loved this. I haven't always gotten on with Ian McEwan in the past, finding his writing style somewhat cold & impersonal but Lessons is warm, humorous, rich and relatable. The ambitious, expansive historical span is kept personal via Roland's experience of it, and the essential trauma at the heart of the novel is kept somehow light, intelligently dealt with in a fresh, mature, sensitive and thought-provoking way. The main character manages to strike a balance between being somewhat aimless and drifting (raising interesting questions about how we view our lives and choices), but still engaging as a character, through his intelligence, self-reflection and empathy / connections with others. I was excited to realise the story was approaching present day, and found myself hungrily reading to see where it took Roland and how it would end. The ending was satisfying and classy. Massively recommended - huge thanks to publisher and Netgalley for the opportunity to read.

This is a sweeping, ambitious novel which weaves a tapestry of seismic global events with the personal lives of the protagonist, Roland and his family.

McEwan draws into his framework for this novel the 20th century as a backdrop bringing about epic events and changes of a scale that have never been seen before in the space of a hundred years.

Through Roland's family we see the generational differences, so pronounced in this time of change, causing formative experiences, deviations of attitudes, and collisions in relationships.

Yet, in the centre of this spinning chaotic whirlwind of events, broken people, and rapid change, Roland clings to what is good about his life, family, nation and the world.

I loved following Roland's life. I enjoyed the nostalgia this novel evokes through the modern history it explores. As it's such a long book I really felt like I had got to know Roland and his family like friends and found his journey touching and endearing. I struggled with this book at times as I wasn't well whilst reading some of it and could only manage small chunks. I enjoyed it much more when I could immerse myself in it more fully. It is a quiet novel in many ways, with the plot always coming secondary to character, but with such a captivating, rock-solid protagonist juxtaposed with the transient drama of the world around him, it was a compelling mix.

I am never disappointed with McEwan's writing and truly believe his books are masterpieces. Lessons is no exception. Are the lessons learnt and is there hope for the future at the end of this book? You'll have to read it and find out 😊.

This honest review is given with thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this book.

This is the story of how Roland goes through a life that is shaped by the events that surround him and needs to learn the lessons of his past.

One of the key experiences Roland needs to "learn" from is his grooming and sexual abuse by his piano teacher as a vulnerable teenager. A pivotal moment is when the Cuban Missile Crisis is happening which leads to him making a crucial decision which will shape the test of his life.

Roland is not always a sympathetic character and sometimes the novel becomes political and didactic. It's ambitious in its span , but not as successful overall as Atonement say.

There are interesting themes of guilt, responsibility and opposing "systems". His wife's parents were active in the resistance Movement against the Nazis. Another character works from "within" a system to challenge social inequality.

It's very much rooted in political events such as World War 2, The Cuban Missile Crisis, the erection of the Wall in Berlin showing that we are all a product of our times.
Roland is a drifter which is explained psychologically by his teenage experiences and his itinerant childhood (his Dad was in the Army) . I wasn't sure about the idea of him being a part time tennis coach , the musician jobs were more in keeping with the story.

The strongest sections were the later sections as he gets into old age (particularly the Daphne sections) and his relationship with his son.

McEwan is always worth a read but I won't be re-reading this one. I'd rather go back to Atonement.

I was giddy about this book, as soon as my sister informed me that the author Ian McEwan was the author of 'Atonement', a favourite film of ours.
The opening scenes, where we see a pivotal moment in Roland's childhood and life are extremely poignant and uncomfortable for the reader to read, and his innocence made my heart melt. We see that his wife has disappeared, and then the book brings us the events leading through his life- up to the point where she vanishes.
From then on, these moments impact Roland's life and behaviour in such a vivid way. The world events through the book- the Chernobyl diaster, the Covid pandemic and all those in between) make this a book that at times reads like a history book. They are hugely relevant to books set in those times, and in turn to Roland's life, but during those descriptions, I kept just wanting the story to go back to Roland and what was happening to him. I see why they had to be included, but I wish they hadn't felt as long and 'school-y'!
The story around Roland's wife's disappearance was touched on throughout the book, and I loved how we were constantly brought back to it to keep the readers engaged and intrigued.
I think I loved Atonement more, because of it's later impact on me and because it was my first McEwan book.

McEwan is on absolutely top form in Lessons. It’s a blockbuster of a story which spans several decades as we follow the way Roland’s life pans out. He’s a fascinating central character, moulded by childhood events. But more than that, as he moves into adulthood and marriage, his life is further shaped by the times. The cultural freedoms of the Sixties, the New Labour eighties along with Chernobyl.

This is an ambitious and sweeping narrative, but McEwan takes the reader with him as he explores human themes we can all relate to. For me, this is probably his best novel yet and it’s one I’ll revisit at a later date. Elegant and engaging.

My thanks to the publisher for a review copy via Netgalley.

Lessons is more biography than novel. It follows the span or Roland Baines’s life, from his youth in the Middle East to his twilight days in London, and because of the length and slow pacing I felt at times that I was living this in real-time! Every description is huge, passing characters are given full paragraphs describing their lives, long-winded digressions can span many many pages, and that bloat and preachiness often made this a chore to read. The redeeming feature is Ian McEwan’s prose – golden tongued as always there’s never a phrase or word that’s out of place. Sadly, this one didn’t connect with me. It’s better than a 3, so rounding up to a 4.

This is a beautiful book by McEwan. I was swept away into the lives of these complex, human and fascinating characters. 'Lessons' is ambitious and covers a lot of ground but in McEwan's stunning hands we know we are safe. I adored this.
Thank you to NetGalley and Random House UK for an advance copy.

After a series of contemporary novels focusing on single issues Lessons sees McEwan return to the decade-hopping chronicle style of Atonement. Like that novel a formative sexual encounter casts a long shadow over a life: in this case restless drifter Roland, whose life we follow from a fifties childhood at the end of Empire to COVID and Brexit. We start somewhere in the middle, where Roland is trying to make sense of his wife Alissia’s sudden disappearance - the second defining moment of Roland’s life. From here we flash backwards to Roland’s teenage years at boarding school and the first: his growing fascination with music teacher Miriam who seduces him aged fourteen.

At times this novel can pin Roland’s life too neatly to the decades: sixties rebellion and travelling; flirtations with entrepreneurialism in the eighties and a comfortable circle of New Labour friends and families in the nineties. But it gathers momentum and intensity in its final third as Roland seeks confrontations with the teacher who abused him and with the wife who left him: both events that Roland turns over and over in his mind to try and construct a narrative of his life that fits. This is a baggy novel, at times meandering, and it’s fascinating to see a novelist whose work has been defined by tight control and style explore a much looser style of work. To return to the title, there are no easy Lessons to be drawn from these encounters.

Lessons by Ian McEwan Narrated by: Simon McBurney. I found this book like marmite! You either love it or hate it However, I didn't love it but the narrators voice made me love it and he had a lot to do with it!!!! His voice was beautiful and Just perfect for this book. If I had to read Lessons I think I would of given up at the beginning.

This book is about a gentleman called Roland Baines and he takes us through his life; all his relationships, and especially his relationship with wife Ingrid and his son Roland. Various historical events, World War II, the Suez Canal, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Chernobyl, the fall of the Berlin Wall, Brexit and the recent pandemic of Covid etc.

This book is full of historical advents that has happened which made it an interesting read or audiobook. However, and Be-warned it is 17 hrs and 34 mins long. But, great to listen to when you are revamping some old furniture in the garden whilst catching some autumn sun rays on you back and face.

Big Thank you to NetGalley, for a free copy of this book in exchange for my fair and honest opinion.

I am a big fan of Ian McEwan so I feel incredibly privileged to get an ARC of this book and an opportunity to review it. What I love about the author’s writing is that whatever the story is about you can bet it will be completely different to the last one. You can also guarantee the writing will be beautiful and insightful and he’s definitely achieved it again. I usually read books quite quickly but this book made me slow down and take my time, and when I wasn’t reading it I was thinking about the characters and their lives. The narrative is told from Roland’s perspective and although it’s the story of his life at the same time it really isn’t, it’s the story of the women in his life, a story about his son, and a story about a generation. It really is a beautiful piece of work that deserves to be read and savoured. I know at the beginning I said I was a big fan of Ian McEwan and after reading this book I don’t think that will change anytime soon.

I first discovered Ian McEwan when I was a teenager and I can still recall being blown away by his two collections of short stories – “First Love, Last Rites” (1975) and “In Between The Sheets” (1978). I had never read anything like these before and his first novel “The Cement Garden” (1978) was equally flooring.
Decades on we are up to his 17th adult novel and along the way there has been the all-time classic, “Atonement” (2001) and the very strong, ("Enduring Love" (1997)“, The Innocent” (1990), “Saturday” (2005) and “Nutshell” (2016)), the okay “On Chesil Beach” (2007) and the one which left me cold but won him the Booker Prize in 1998 “Amsterdam”. I haven’t read everything by him- “Nutshell” was the last and I reckon this latest makes it my 11th experience of him over the years.
Main character in this decades-spanning work is Roland Baines (a character the same age as McEwan which gives this an autobiographical feel to historical perspectives if not the actual events of the novel) and central is his experience as an 11 year old new to private school in 1959 when his female piano teacher punishes his mistakes by slipping a finger under his shorts and pinching his thigh. This leads to an obsession for Roland which endures over the next few years. Obsession is something McEwan does so well, we’ve seen it before in “Enduring Love” but here it is two-sided and we see the influence of this woman in the rest of Roland’s life. Another starting point is in 1986 when his wife fails to return home leaving new father Roland as a suspect in her disappearance.
McEwan’s novel brings us up to the present-day – post-lockdown (this is my first experience of the lockdown months in fiction and it feels very authentic and I discovered I am ready to read about it now ) and takes in family members, including Lawrence, the son he had to bring up alone and also incorporates back-story of his mother-in-law’s experience in post-war Germany.
At times the writing is superb and it is bated-breath fiction- particularly around the relationship with Roland and piano teacher Miriam yet at other times it feels surprisingly loose for an author whose work is often so concise and tight and yet even when it feels close to becoming bogged down in the everyday minutiae of family life, for example, he is able to produce writing and scenes which pulls it back and keeps the reader on side. His son, Lawrence, and his generation feel quite safe characters and I did expect more spark and tension to come from them (unless this is McEwan’s comment on this age group) and there is one characterisation (I’ll leave you to work it out) who does not feel totally plausible.
It does feel a long book, in terms of words and scope. It is highly reflective with a lot of evaluating the past and the lessons learnt. I feel it is almost but not quite up there amongst his best work, there are scenes which will likely remain with me for a long time but I think that the fact that I found myself struggling with a star rating for this (even as I was writing this review) suggests it was not a five star read for me but a very high four star work.
Lessons was published in hardback by Jonathan Cape and as an e-book by Vintage on 13th September. Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the advance review copy.

Lessons felt like a very long book because it covers the whole life of the protagonist, Roland Baines, and his interaction with family, friends and world events. I found Roland himself to be a bit insipid, but fortunately the women in his life - Miriam, Alissa and Daphne - had more interesting characters. A worthwhile read for me, but in the end it didn’t set the world on fire.

I found 'Lessons' a bit of a mixed bag but enjoyable overall. This is McEwan's longest novel and follows the character of Roland Baines from his childhood at a state boarding school in Suffolk through the various disappointments and upheavals of his adult life. Roland's life is shaped by several formative experiences but central to the novel are his secret teenage liaison with his piano teacher Miriam Cornell which 'rewires his brain', and his wife Alissa's decision to abandon him and their seven-month-old son in order to pursue her writing career.

Roland himself is a very likeable drifter of his character who develops a great deal of insight into the forces that have defined his life, but it is some of the novel's female characters who make the most interesting choices - particularly Miriam Cornell and Alissa, but also Roland's mother whose life story we only fully discover after the death of Roland's overbearing military father, and Alissa's mother Jane Farmer whose literary ambitions remain unfulfilled. Other characters feel slightly less well-drawn - figures like Roland's teenage bandmate Peter Mount and his partner Daphne play important roles in the narrative but do at times feel more like ciphers.

Another strength of the novel is the range of historical events the novel explores from the 1940s to the present, particularly in Britain and Germany. The German White Rose resistance movement, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Berlin Wall, Brexit and Covid all play a key role in Roland's life, as do the shifting sands of centre-left politics , McEwan offers some interesting new insights on many of these events but some sections feel over-long and perhaps extraneous, for instance a lengthy section in which Roland becomes involved with an East-German family. The novel has quite a lot in common with other 'whole-life' novels like William Boyd's 'Any Human Heart' and Paul Auster's '4321', but it didn't feel like it had quite the same momentum behind it, and I often found myself longing for the darkness and humour of many of McEwan's earlier and shorter novels.

Nonetheless, 'Lessons' is never less than well-written; there is a warmth and tenderness to McEwan's depiction of Roland and those around him, and the novel becomes rather moving in some of its later sections. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC to review.

Lessons by Ian McEwan is his first 'big' novel, covering one man's life from the age of 11 to mid-seventies from the 1950s to the present day. The novel covers the defining moments of history (the Vietnam War, the Fall of the Berlin Wall, Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic) that act as the backdrop to Roland's life and the huge emotional events that shape the course of his life: being sent to boarding school, not going to university or becoming a concert pianist, falling in love with a woman who will one day break his heart, becoming a father himself.

The "lessons" that Roland learns start out with the piano classes he takes at school and then develop into bigger lessons about love and loss, revenge, forgiveness, and ultimately how to make peace with yourself.

The different relationships that Roland has with the women in his life are on the face of it very varied, however all have a theme of loss running through them: he is separated from his beloved mother as a child at the behest of his bullying, controlling father; his first wife leaves him and their baby son to pursue her literary ambitions; he becomes a widow later in life. The novel could be really sad but there is something about Roland that remains curious and hopeful about what could come next that keeps you compelled to keep reading.

The storyline involving a young Roland being drawn into a relationship with his piano teacher when he's fourteen is a really powerful exploration of power/control, and the legacy of abuse. I thought that McEwan explored the intricacies of the conflicting emotions for Roland really well.

As a big fan of McEwan's writing I was eager to read Lessons and for the most part enjoyed it very much. There were some elements that I thought were a bit dry/long-winded and didn't seem relevant to Roland's story. One example is the section where the history of the White Rose is described in detail - but this is in relation to his ex-mother- and father- in-law's personal history. I did get a bit bored of being "told" lots of the story as well, rather than having events unfold. It's not quite in the same league as the Ken Follett "Century Trilogy" but I think fans of McEwan will find lots to enjoy here (Atonement is still my favourite though!).

The lessons in question are piano lessons, begun at a young boy’s boarding school with an enigmatic teacher. Schoolboy Roland Baines introduces us to her with a glimpse of her strange cruelty and with this she is fixed in our conscious as the influence she will have on his whole life. As the story is told from Roland’s point of view we are unlikely to hear much insightful criticism of the protagonist, but as he jumps from relationship to relationship – often we jump through the narrative and look back to see how the friendship blossomed- we learn that he is reactive, lazy at times, and indecisive, chronically considering but taking no action. Indeed in the hands of a less capable writer there would be little of interest about Roland Baines, the fascination lies primarily with what happens to him. And things do tend to happen to him.-read the whole review at www.booketybook.com