I still need to get this novel published and behind me. I’ve since written some journalism and a short story - I was commissioned to write one that was optimistic about the future, which I found irresistible, although my story is a very nuanced optimism. I feel completely emptied out, but quite pleasantly so. I felt like I’ve given this book absolutely everything. Presuming it’s not your final novel, was it difficult starting over after this? This commitment to the whole life is something I could only have done now - I had to lead a whole life. One writer friend read it and wrote, “This reads like your LAST NOVEL.” I knew what he meant. This time, though, I did feel a difference - I felt as if I were bringing everything I knew and everything I’d written. I try starting each novel as if it were my first, but there’s no escaping the self. I’m coming into the October or November of my own life I was thinking about what it would be like to look at the whole life of someone. He later journeys into East Berlin and takes stands in British politics even as he roams through an unsettled existence. “They have to feed off each other.”įor Roland, the fears and freedoms of childhood give way to an adolescence marked by sexual abuse from a piano teacher (although it takes him decades to see it as anything but an affair). “The larger picture won’t have much impact without the small things that make up our lives,” McEwan says. But while the scope may be vast, the focus is much narrower: a character study of Roland Baines. While he has often incorporated the sweep of politics and history into novels including “The Innocent,” “ Amsterdam” and “ Atonement,” his new book, “ Lessons,” is of a different scale.įor starters, it covers everything from World War II to the climate crisis and COVID lockdown, with everything from the Suez Canal crisis to Chernobyl in between. If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from, whose fees support independent bookstores.Īs he reached his 70s, Ian McEwan realized he had lived enough and seen enough to write an epic.

Lessons book by ian mcewan