Ian McEwan is such a gifted writer. he can seemingly do many characters and themed genres. and they always capture me in so i just want to give all my time and soak it all up.
this book brings us to Thomas who is obsessed with a poet and particular one of his work pieces that has been delivered once and lost amongst time. he got a wealth of information on this poem but has never actually read it himself.
but there is so much to contend with in the world Thomas lives in. there is so much to come and contend with in a world that is full of global conflict. i think Thomas need to understand the past is a huge theme in our current climate. you can forget or ignore what happened before or you are doomed to repeat it kind of thing. but also what damage does it cause to stay there. and then not live in the present. you'll get it when you read it. and your thoughts might be totally different to mine. and that is what i like about his books too. they get you to thinking and being pushy and judged.
i was also reminded how much we pin on a past with a yearning for better times? or take word or tellings for fact?
i cant really say too much without bringing out the details. but just know when Ian does a good book, he does a good book. its always smart, well planned out and laid out. and i just somehow manage to believe in whatever hes telling me!
im not usually one for sci-fi or future doom kind of books. not at all. no way lol (that is the level of my unease around them) but for Ian i knew i was going to give it a go and he would hand hold me through it. and he did. it was a quiet but oh so loud brilliant piece of work.

This book had me gripped from the opening line:
“On 20 May 2119 I took the overnight ferry from Port Marlborough and arrived in the later afternoon at the small quay near Maentworgunder-Sea that serves the Bodleian Snowdonia Library.”

The first two thirds of the book are set in England in the 22nd century, which is now an archipelago of islands, following catastrophic flooding as a consequence of nuclear war and global heating which caused scores of millions to migrate from Africa to Europe. The world’s population has halved, the diversity of food has narrowed so acorn and chicory have replaced real coffee, libraries, archives and seed banks have all been moved to higher ground and artificial intelligence has been taken from the control of private companies and made into a national service.

The central character is Tom Metcalfe, an academic specialising in English literature from 1990 to 2030 and obsessed by his quest to find a lost series of sonnets written by the fictional poet Francis Blundy for the birthday of his wife, Vivian, in 2014. He is the book’s first unreliable narrator.

The last third of the book is a memoir written by another unreliable narrator. I won’t say more to avoid spoilers.

McEwan has said of this book: “My ambition in this novel was to let the past, present and future address each other across the barriers of time”.
McEwan more than lives up to this ambition. I particularly enjoyed the clash between Tom’s nostalgia for the past and the attitude of his students who “cannot believe that pre-Inundation people of a mere century ago were at all like themselves. Those ancients were ignorant, squalid and destructive louts. As one of the brighter students pointed out, surely they could have done something other than grow their economies and wage wars. Behind this, though never stated, is the notion that they deserved the mega-deaths they brought upon themselves.”

It’s a book about nostalgia, the value of literature, biography, history and the natural world, the devaluing of the humanities as a subject for study, the role of women in society, marriage, morality, the secrets we keep from each other and whether anyone can truly know anyone else.

It is part literary mystery, part speculative climate fiction and part the story of a marriage, indeed several marriages, and I couldn’t put it down.

If you enjoyed Michael Christie’s ‘Greenwood’ or indeed AS Byatt’s ‘Possession’, I think you will enjoy “What We Can Know”.

Thank you to Vintage books and NetGalley for an ARC of this novel.

Although McEwan has important themes to explore in this book about climate change and politics, it felt leaden.
In 2014 the poet Blundy read his epic new poem aloud to a group of friends . It encapsulated the zeitgeist and bore comparison to The Waste Land in terms of literary importance. However the Corona- a cycle of sonnets- has been lost.

Scholar Tom sets out to find it by searching through archives etc and records of all who were there on that momentous day. He is living in 2119 in the wake of a climate event which has inundated most of the world and turned Great Britain into a set of disjointed islands which limits his access to certain archives due to geography and lawlessness.

I kept ploughing on with this book but it would have been better in some ways as an essay. Yes it has lots of "Big Ideas" /important themes,but I couldn't engage/be interested in any of the characters except for Cora in the second half .

To me it felt didactic and slow, although definitely a book of quality. I prefer a book about people and emotions not ideas so it didn't work for me.

McEwan sets his novel in a dystopian future, in which Britain, ruined by the climate crisis, is now an archipelago. The novel is told from the perspective of an academic, piecing together the evidence and cultural significance of a dinner party. Unfortunately, it seems like McEwan can't decide whether he is going to write in more of a rollicking, compelling sci-fi tradition of, let's say, Stephen King, or tell this tale in the more literary tradition of A.S. Byatt's Possession and the resultant writing is therefore neither particularly interesting/readable or beautifully moving and poignant. The inner monologue of his academic character and his approach to research does not particularly ring true, either. McEwan appears to be trying to comment on the information age, the climate age and the ineffable nature of truth, but the vehicle he uses to do so is not particularly enjoyable or memorable.

Unfinished. I’ve read several McEwan titles and loved them, but this I found impossible to finish.
I was struggling with characters and relationships and just wasn’t enjoying it. Reading other reviews made me feel it wasn’t for me and I wouldn’t manage it easily so it felt best to leave this as it was. My apologies as I was looking forward to it.

McEwan is never the easiest read - A Child In Time also required a fair amount of mental effort, but it may be one I come back to later.

I think this is his best yet. With Ian McEwan you always have a book that stays with you. You can be sitting still, months later and you will suddenly realise that you are thinking about some aspect of the last Ian McEwan book you have read. Not only is his work thought provoking, usually disturbing in some way but always leaves you with questions to discuss. On top of excellent storylines his use of English is sublime. Every word is perfectly chosen and matters. I love losing myself in his literary world, no matter how difficult some topics may be. Just a beautiful (slightly uncomfortable) experience.

Ian McEwan’s ability to immerse the reader in his words, his explanations, his thoughts keep you reading even if the first half part of the story drags a little. More than 100 years ago, a poem was written by a famous poet but is been missing. Tom, a professor in a new world after a nuclear accident, is finding it and will unravel more secrets than he anticipated. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC copy. This is my honest review.

In a year that has already delivered some fascinating climate fiction, one of England’s best, Ian McEwan enters the fray. What We Can Know is a book about a climate-affected future but it is as much about academia, historians and the power of great art. As with many of his books (Atonement included), What We Can Know is a book that looks at a series of events from one perspective but then shifts that perspective to give a completely different view of the characters and their actions. And through all of that readers are left to wonder where the truth lies, given the vested interest in each narrator on their version of the truth.
The first half on What We Can Know is set in 2119, a time in which Britain is a series of archipelagos following climate disaster and war (an era that people call “the Derangement). Tom Metcalf, an academic is travelling by boat to the new Boedlian library on the top of Mount Snowdon to continue his research into famous early 21st Century poet Francis Blundy. Blundy hosted a famous dinner party in 2014 at which he recited a poem for his wife Vivienne. That poem ‘A Corona for Vivienne’ has never been found but somehow, in its absence, became a beacon of the environment movement (ironically since Blundy did not believe in climate change). Metcalf becomes what he describes as “the biographer of the reputation of an unread poem”. Metcalf is obsessed with the Blundys, particularly Vivienne, how he thinks that famous dinner party happened, who was there and what they thought. This is part of a more general obsession with the era 1990 – 2030, the world as it was just before the Derangement.
Metcalf thinks he understand the world of the Blundys due to his access to a trove of physical and digital information. But the second half of the book, that tells the story from Vivienne’s perspective as a kind of confession of sorts, shows how flawed these understandings can be. This idea of trying to understand and reconstitute the past through documents is a running theme of the novel. Metcalf believes he has it easier because no one studying earlier periods of history had access to such a wealth of information. McEwan disabuses readers of that idea.
As in many McEwan books, very few of the characters come out of the story well. Thomas has a fraught relationship with his wife and academic partner Rose, complicated particularly by his obsession with Vivian (at one point after they are married he says that he might even be in love with Vivienne, an observation he immediately regrets). As the second half of the book shows, he lives in a world that he has constructed from the detritus of the past which may not actually represent the world.
Vivienne herself is also far from beyond reproach. Her story opens with what might be called a classic McEwan situation in which she rescues an abandoned child. The tale then goes through her first marriage which ends tragically after her husband develops Alzheimer’s, during which time she starts an affair with Blundy. But this is her narrative so readers need to remember that even when she seems to be brutally honest about her own failings, Vivienne cannot necessarily be trusted either
What We can Know is another amazing novel from McEwan – layered, effortlessly erudite and deeply complex. McEwan takes shots at academia and the humanities in particular and their ability to unearth truths. McEwan also considers the way in which our world might be considered from the future but in doing so, how he sees it now. He considers how history is constructed and imagined and how much of that process is driven by the mind of the person doing the interpretation. And he anchors this all in the fascinating stories of two very imperfect characters, living in two very different times.

The story takes a while to unravel. The first half is set in the 22nd century as humanity is struggling to piece itself together after several climate and political catastrophes. A researcher obsessed with an old poem, which reportedly only appeared in a single unique copy, is trying to piece together the facts surrounding its writing and disappearance in the early 21st century. The second half is set in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, describing the events leading up to the poem's writing.

The reason I say it takes a while to unravel is because while at the beginning it feels very much like the book is about a climate disaster and what academic and social life look like in the period following it, the book is essentially about relationships, love, and memory. At its core, this is story of a woman unable to release herself from the loves of her life and find peace and contentment. At another level, it's the story of how history is written and manipulated by those who act it out for the sake of posterity.

While conceptually brilliant, there are lots of issues with this book. First, I really struggled with the messy first half. I understand its purpose in retrospect, but one would have wanted it to be a bit less fragmented and disjointed. It was unnecessarily lengthened by various diversions from the main storyline, and there was nothing in it that made me care one bit about what was happening. The second half was redeeming, and made the book worthwhile, but I was very close to stopping it early without even getting to the better written bits later on. Second, I found it to be too lengthy, repetitive, and not punchy enough. There were whole sections that one could skip without affecting the enjoyment from the book one bit. The gushing over poetry just didn't do it for me - its contribution to the main plotline was marginal at best, and a lot of it felt tangential. I would venture to guess that at least a third of the words could be cut, leaving a much more poignant outcome. Finally, it felt a bit tired. The themes (marriage, ageing, infidelity, etc) are known and the book did little to add novelty to them.

I think this is probably a good book for fans of the author (though, I'm just guessing here, as this is the first book by the author I've read). On its own merits, it's not really worth reading and I don't see it leaving any meaningful mark on my reading history.

My thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an early copy of this book in return for an honest review.

What We Can Know is a speculative novel all about the gaps in our knowledge. McEwan considers the questions of what we can predict (and what we choose to believe) of the future, and what we can piece together of the past. Is another person ever truly knowable, however much 'evidence' we have?

It's a thought-provoking concept, but as the book wore on I found that the storytelling doesn't leave much room for free-thought. The narrator constantly reiterates how much of his story is conjecture, and that he is approaching his subject with a strong bias. So it's hardly surprising when you discover just how much of the evidence has been misinterpreted, or deliberately laid as false tracks. Perhaps it also doesn't help that I found all the central characters deliberately unlikeable.

What We Can Know poses some interesting questions but makes the answers a little too obvious.

What We Can Know was my first Ian McEwan book, and I don’t think it will be my last! It’s unique and challenging but thought-provoking. I think this book is best described as a meditation on history: is it really important in a society with an uncertain future? Can we learn from it or are we doomed to repeat our mistakes anyway? Can we ever truly know history or are we doomed to see it through rose tinted glasses, nostalgia blinding us to reality? These are some big questions, and don’t expect them to be nicely answered and held out on a platter for you.
There are two main timelines the book follows: one follows a Tom, university lecturer in a future where climate change has basically led to the collapse of globalisation and many other aspects of society. Tom has a particular interest in the poet Francis Blundy and his lost poem, The Corona, as well as a fascination with (and love of) the ‘excess’ and wealth of the 21st century. The other follows Vivien, the wife of the poet Francis Blundy, in our time as she navigates the changing world.
I don’t think this book’s style is going to work for everyone: while the prose is really well crafted, it’s also rather dense and the impersonal nature of it makes it somewhat difficult to connect with the characters, particularly Vivien who has her story told in the third person while Tom is in the first. However, I do think this is a very deliberate way of portraying our distance from the past and readers shouldn’t let it put them off. I did find myself having to push through a little bit in the beginning, but I think the payoff at the end was worth it.
I don’t want to say too much about this book, because I think it is best read going in as blind as possible so this is probably going to be a shorter review than I usually write. I think this was just a really well executed story. It knew its themes and its purpose and portrayed them really well! Despite our distance from the historical characters, they all did feel really real and human in that murky way that historical figures often are. The depiction of a future world impacted by climate change felt really realistic and thought out.
I think the quote that best sums up the book for me is “The Corona was more beautiful for not being known.” It examines how we paint history to suit our fascinations and ideals, ignoring the fact that we can never truly know the details and nuances that make up reality (hence the title!). What We Can Know was definitely not my typical reading fare, but I enjoyed it nonetheless and I’ll definitely be picking up more Ian McEwan! Keep an eye out for this when it comes out in September, even if you’re not sure if it will be for you because it may just surprise you!

I love McEwan and have since The Cement Garden and In Between the Sheets: I found Lessons to be a return to peak form, which What We Can Know continues. Thank you for the opportunity to read this book in advance!

Ian McEwan is one of my favourite authors, but I have found some of his books more enjoyable than others!
This novel takes us from a dinner party in poet Francis Blundy’s house in 2014 and his lost “A Corona for Vivien” to lecturer and historian Tom in 2130 and his research into Francis and his lost masterpiece.
McEwan paints a bleak future, blaming the reckless culture of the twenty first century of ignoring climate change for the problems faced in 2130.
This is a book to discuss and to savour with new observations discovered with each reading.
Take your time and enjoy.

The story is set ina dystopian future where much of the UK has flooded. The main character, Tom has travlled up to Snowdonia to a library there that seeks to preserve the past. He is researching the whereabouts of a lost poem from a 100 years before. the poet wrote the poem for his wife and read it aloud at a dinner party on her 54th birthday and gave the only copy to her as a gift. Tom seeks to use advances in quantum computing to try to uncover where the disappeared poem could be. We also get glimpses into the not so happy relationship between the poset and his wife and discussion of how the climate disaster came to be.

I can;t say I really connected with or enjoyed the book. I often find that Ian McEwan's writing ( for me) is a bit frosty, pretentious and leaves me cold, even though I can recognise just how accomplished it is. I'm sure most people will really love the novel.

This is a book with two storylines 100 years apart. The latter occurs after the world has suffered the climate change event that is a predictable consequence of the lives we lead today. But it is a dinner party and a poem from the earlier time that fills the waking hours of the future characters. The present day storyline takes you up to and beyond the dinner party but on a completely different tack. It's a mystery within a mystery.
Excellent story, excellent characterisation, excellent writing. Just excellent.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the chance to read an advance copy of this book.

McEwan’s latest blends detective-style mystery, climate dystopia, and philosophical reflection in his recognisable style.

The story moves between a 2014 dinner party where a poet debuts a mysterious work, and a ruined Britain in 2119, where a scholar obsessively searches for that very poem (long since lost). The dual timeline really highlights the novel’s central question—how much of history, our own memories, and even our loved ones can we truly know?

The writing is richly descriptive and plays on some of our worst fears as a civilisation. The post-apocalyptic sections are eerie and fascinating. The past reveals secrets gradually and in a satisfying way. With all that said, some parts fell a little emotionally flat, and the pacing can be slow if you’re looking for a more plot-driven page turner.

Still, I found this to be a thought-provoking and overall enjoyable read.

Rating: 3.5 stars

The novel begins in 2119 – the first party narrator is Tom Metcalfe, a literature/history of literature teacher based at the University of the South Downs – the reason for the name being that the UK is now an archipelago after a catastrophic Atlantic tsunami caused by a rogue nuclear strike in the 2040s (the Inundation”) – which itself followed after a series of wars (seen as beginning with the Russian invasion of Ukraine – and which included conflicts in which misguided AI systems deployed nuclear weapons pre-emptively) which also followed the failure of the early 21st Century to deal with climate change, a (for us) contemporary period of history which from around the 2030s was labelled “the derangement”

Metcalfe’s research interest is in the works of a poet Francis Blundy – whose most famous work “A Corona for Vivien” (a sonnet corona – classically fifteen sonnets on a related theme where the last line of one is the first line of the next, and the last sonnet is all of the first lines) – a kind of pastoral to England and love letter to his wife, was recited by him at a 2014 dinner (later labelled the Second Immortal Dinner after the 1817 dinner with Keats/Wordsworth etc) of a literary set on Vivien’s birthday, but thereafter never printed.

The poem itself has become somewhat legendary – not least as its seen (or given its only known second hand – imagined) as something of a paean to a departed natural-England and even to the joys of long marriage. The fact that the poem has never been found only adds to its allure – although Metcalfe hopes finding it will make his reputation and earn him a Professorship.

The electronic trail of our early 21st Century – any encryption long broken - makes the historians job almost too detailed : not least as other technology has rather stagnated if not gone somewhat backwards – and with AI now only available via a carefully rationed and controlled National AI system (“the machine”), this rather benevolent development of AI being part of what the Literary Review not inaccurately characterised as McEwan’s more Panglossian than dystopian view of the 22nd Century UK (inter-racial genetic mixing now ubiquitous, a renewed spirit of optimism etc).

And this whole first section – around 3/5th of the novel – tells of Tom’s research which culminates in a rather classic “X marks the spot” treasure hunt for the poem which he believes Vivien buried.

As a quick aside there is really no difference in the English of some one hundred years hence to now – something McEwan gets over by having a reference to “The conversation moved on to a subject that had always interested me - the strange stability of the English language.” and a longer piece of speculation on what might have caused that stability– ¬but which given the changes which we already now occurred between 2014 and now, as well as the enormous societal changes, remains implausible – and feels like slightly unimaginative writing while also jarring a little with the use of other dystopian-fiction traits like the use of “the derangement”.

What works much better is the attitude of the 22nd Century to our own – including that of Tom’s students, typically disdainful of what they see as the insanity and indulgence of the derangement but who later prove to be rather bored with Tom and his generation’s continuing obsession with the early 21st Century derangement and actually far more focused on the future.

I also enjoyed some meditations on the role that fiction played both during the derangement and afterwards – there is a particularly intriguing running reference to an author (Mabel Fisk) born in Stockport in 2016 but who goes on in the 2050s and 2060s to rival Shakespeare in influence and usher in a new Golden Age of novels.

Overall, I found this whole section thought provoking if not consistently convincing in why the poem if of such interest or in how England got to where it did.

The second part of the novel returns to our times – and a journal kept by Vivien and which gives us much more of the truth of her marriage, and the poem itself.

While it works in contrast to the first section – and of course produces exactly the key point of the novel, the limitations of what we can really know of the past even with much more information in the future looking back on us than we have now looking back at history – in itself it reads like exactly what it is, a contemporary novella of manners set among a rather privileged arty set, and so of lesser interest.

Overall, I find it still impressive that approaching his 80th birthday McEwan can still produce a novel of such breadth. It did not feature on the Booker Prize 2025 (for which it was eligible despite being published some 6 weeks after the longlist) but would I think be an excellent and appropriate edition for the Climate Fiction Prize – a Prize that says “For societies to fully grasp the climate change threat and to embrace its solutions, we need better stories” – and who better to do that than perhaps the UK’s pre-eminent literary storyteller.

First, I should say I'm a huge fan of McEwan's writing, so my joy at receiving the ARC of this next novel was enormous. I have, in the past, felt that his earlier (perhaps even his first) novels were somehow better than the more recent ones, and there is something in that, still. However, this novel is superb. I won't give the plot, as others have done that, but I will say that this is a cleverly structured novel that asks questions about history and, yes, climate change. Such a brilliant idea. Here we are, in the midst of all this yet-to-be history, and McEwan examines it, as if from a future we don't yet know. What kind of brain thinks that up? Protagonist, Tom, is an historian and scholar, telling us about how the lives we're living now, in the 21st century are viewed by those yet to come. Fascinating that the glorification of our 'now' (his 'history') reveals a view of the past as idolised and untrustworthy.

As others have said -- and don't be surprised by this -- the narrative style, especially in part 1, is dense, you might say 'scholarly'. But that is for effect, successfully. In part 2, another character (from history), Vivian's journal demonstrates McEwan's skill and adds depth of meaning and irony to the title, 'What We Can Know'.

Highly recommended.

I have read one of McEwan's novels previously and was interested by the premise of What We Can Know, especially with the promise of thinking about Britain in 2119.

That being said, I was a little disappointed with this story. I agree with other reviewers that Part One felt too much like reading an academic review and was too boring to try and hold my attention. Closer to the end of Part One I did start to find some enjoyment and Part Two was much easier to read.

I'm also conflicted on how I feel at the end. Glad it was over? Things explained nicely that it felt like nothing of a twist or revelation? I'm honestly not sure.

I can see this novel being used in future literature classes to discuss the topics of climate change weaved throughout along with philosophy. Thinking back to my student days, I would've really struggled to get through this novel.

Overall a solid 3 stars for a good premise and interesting concept, just probably not the right fit for me.
Thank you Random House UK and NetGalley for the chance to read!

I had some trouble with this at first, as I was wondering how to sell this to the customers in the bookstore I work in. It was maybe a bit too intellectual? Once the story got going I found myself fully immersed though. I really liked the idea of the two stories set in different periods and whether we can possibly find out the truth about history from letters, diaries etc. Another great novel by McEwan.
Thank you Jonathan Cape and Netgalley UK for the ARC.