I consumed this book! Or it consumed me, or something. This is a novel telling the life story, or at least from 7 years old to mid his mid-seventies, of one Roland Baines. Roland shares aspects of Ian McEwan’s own life story, such as his relationships with his siblings and his parents, and this added to my fascination with and enjoyment of this quite brilliant book.
Roland, being the child of a soldier, has spent part of his childhood in Libya; at the age of 11 he is sent to a Council-run boarding school where he is happier than he expected to be in the company of other boys. At the age of 14, while worrying that he might not have much longer to live depending on the outcome of the Cuban missile crisis, he finds himself immersed in a life-altering situation with a piano teacher but I will not spoil anyone’s enjoyment of this fabulous book by explaining any further; it was such a joyful experience for me to follow Roland’s life through the years as it will be for all who read it, I am sure.
The book begins with Roland as a 38-year old single parent of a 4 months old baby and continues back and forth over his lifetime, his experiences and interactions shaping him into the person he is to become. There are a lot of clearly-drawn, marvellous characters and plot lines and I was horribly inconvenienced by having to eat, sleep and tidy the house occasionally before I could get back to my reading.
I have been a huge Ian McEwan fan since reading Atonement, but if Lessons had been my introduction to his books I would have gone back and started collecting them as I have done! How wonderful that after writing so well for so long he has come up with another masterpiece.
Published by Vintage.
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