![]() ![]() As Roland struggles to come to terms with his wife’s departure, he relives his early years in Tripoli (his father, a military man, was posted there) and at a boarding school in Suffolk. By some distance McEwan’s longest novel, it moves from Roland’s 1950s childhood to his old age in the 2020s. Lessons could rightly be described as ‘epic’, in both its scope and length. Roland finds himself stunned into torpor. Since departing, she has communicated with him only via postcards and may have returned to her native Germany. ![]() His wife, Alissa, has walked out on him, leaving him to bring up their newborn son, Lawrence. At the start of Lessons, it is 1986 and Roland Baines is a 37-year-old poet living off benefits. ![]() But the statement could also apply to the main character of McEwan’s new novel. T owards the end of his 2007 novella On Chesil Beach, Ian McEwan writes, ‘This is how the entire course of a life can be changed – by doing nothing.’ In that story the inaction involves the male protagonist, who fails to go after his new bride as their relationship collapses. ![]()
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