Book Review

Lessons, by Ian McEwan

Publ: Jonathan Cape. 483 Pages.

The cover of “Lessons” by Ian McEwan shows a young boy at the keyboard of a piano. From his body language we can deduct that he is having a piano lesson. This is the first of the many lessons that the boy and then man, Roland Baines, will learn during his long life.

His piano teacher, a predatory 28-year-old woman, provides 11-year old Roland with his first lesson in sex. This, paradoxically, leaves him with a self-incriminating sense of his own moral culpability, instead of regarding himself as a victim of abuse. This moral sensitivity will accompany him throughout his life, making him acutely aware of the larger historical injustices of the world.

The pageant of European history passes before his eyes from the 1950s to the 2020s.

Moral outrages like Chernobyl, the Cuban missile crisis, Vietnam, Iraq and Brexit are interpreted through his damaged sense of guilt and responsibility.

He asks himself “How did we go from the thrill of the Berlin Wall falling to the storming of the Capitol”?

But that is only the framework for an engrossing account of one life in a time of global change.

Partly influenced by the brutal initiation by his piano teacher, Roland Baines grows up to be a ditherer. He drifts through his “unchosen life” as he describes it, reacting to events, rather than initiating them. In spite of this, he manages to lead a sustainable life as a piano player and aspiring poet.

The story of Roland Baines moves with such a particularity, such minute observation of human behaviour that by the end of the book I felt I knew Roland better than most of my friends.

The book, like Roland’s memories, moves around from youth to childhood, from adulthood to adolescence. Suddenly, after the piano lesson, the story jumps forward to where we find the adult Roland accused of being complicit in the mysterious disappearance of his wife. Apart from instantly becoming the single father of their 7-months old baby son, he also now is the subject of an ongoing police investigation.

This little boy will eventually become one of the sustaining elements of Roland’s growth, inner strength and pathway to happiness.

A square block of a police inspector questions him quite sympathetically, but also rather skeptically. The evidence provided, in part by Roland himself, in part by the inexplicable arrival of cryptic postcards written by his wife Alissa from various parts of Europe, eventually proves his innocence but makes him even more unsure of reality.

As the investigation progresses, we learn that Alissa is an extraordinarily talented German writer. The search for Alissa provides a backstory of the preNazi Germany that her parents had experienced.

Roland is an enigmatic character, changing during my free time. identity and professions many times in his long life. Eventually he shakes off the self-imposed culpability of the piano lesson and finds true happiness. He deserves it. One feels he has learned a lesson.

What is the best way for anyone to make contact with you to join you on a hike or to get involved in conservation of Blushing Brides?

The best way to book a guided hike, get involved with my Blushing Bride conservation project and interact with me personally is to get in touch via WhatsApp or email. My contact details are available on my website at www. santiegouwsmountainguide.co.za.

“Lessons” echoes the historical context of modern Europe as fully as the fabled historical novels of Hilary Mantel in the Wolf Hall Trilogy.

The intimacy and observation of McEwan’s novellas like “On Chesil Beach”, “The Children Act”, and “Saturday” is not lost in this much longer book. It is a big and quite complicated read, but the effort is ultimately worth it.