I’ve learned to depend on Ian McEwan to create well-developed, relatable characters with flaws. And that is why his writing is so engaging. Even when their actions are despicable, as in Miriam Cornell, a music teacher in Lessons, something about them renders them human beings. Miriam teaches piano to protagonist Roland Baines at a British boarding school. She develops a sexual interest in him when he is prepubescent, and by the time he is fourteen years old, she has him living at her home and uses him as a sex slave. Miriam exploits Roland for sexual services for about two years. At the time, Roland believes Miriam is in love with him and is somewhat grateful for the sex “lessons” she provides. However, when Roland finally escapes from her, he realizes that Miriam has been manipulative. Eventually, as this abuse haunts him for the rest of his life, he understands that her actions were criminal.
Roland Baines associates the Miriam years of his life with the Cuban missile crisis. As McEwan writes about Roland Baines and the subsequent episodes in his life, they all intertwine with world events. The story follows Roland as he ages into his seventies and copes with 2020 and the COVID pandemic. At first, I thought there were too many characters. It was sometimes difficult to follow some of their political points of view, especially when we meet Roland’s parents and learn of his father’s service in WWII as part of British forces in Libya and the secrets related to his mother’s previous marriage. Then Roland meets his wife Alissa, and another set of politically involved parents serves an even more thickly developed plot. Alissa’s father, Heinrich, was involved with the White Rose resistance in Munich during WWII, and Jane, Alissa’s mother, wrote a set of journals about the resistance movement. However, as the story progressed and the author introduced many more characters and world events, I became more enamored with the author’s ability to explain historical significance and weave the characters’ development around the complicated incidents shaping their lives. It was genius to have so many characters’ struggles reflecting those of their greater world.
A major plot point is that Alissa abandons her marriage and her son, Lawrence as a seven-month-old baby in 1986. McEwan remarks, “Alissa’s departure had weakened him, and the catastrophe of Chernobyl had made him fearful.” Roland proves himself capable of raising his son as a single father, and he learns to navigate a world where the police suspect that he might have killed his wife since it is unthinkable that a mother would leave her child. This book contains several female characters who give up careers and aspirations to become wives and mothers, and then some, including Alissa, have second thoughts. McEwan explores various aspects of feminism through the characters in this novel. Gender discrimination and ancestral lifestyles are essential in the characters’ decisions. Of course, the effects of political philosophies are paramount to the characters and the plot.
This novel includes multiple journals, oral histories, and storytelling segments. Naturally, one must consider the literal and symbolic messages conveyed by new and age-old stories. There is so much to contemplate from the descriptions of political and world affairs. I wonder whether it is possible to separate ourselves from world influence as we go through life. How does storytelling affect families and civilization?
There is so much in this novel. It is lengthy, but I read it in a few days since it was riveting. Many themes provide insights into the novel’s title, and the various disasters and cultural achievements serve as lessons. Some of the thoughts still reverberating after reading include:
How do we learn the most important life lessons?
How much do we learn from what our parents teach, and how much do we learn from what our parents exemplify?
Can school lessons ever be as valuable as life lessons?
Does limited schooling affect one’s development as a productive citizen? What lessons do we learn from municipal employees such as teachers and police officers?
Among the many passages I highlighted while reading are these:
“Those angry or disappointed gods in modern form, Hitler, Nasser, Khrushchev, Kennedy and Gorbachev may have shaped his life but that gave Roland no insight into international affairs.”
“By what logic or motivation or helpless surrender did we all, hour by hour, transport ourselves within a generation from the thrill of optimism at Berlin’s falling Wall to the storming of the American Capitol? He had thought 1989 was a portal, a wide opening to the future, with everyone streaming through. It was merely a peak. Now, from Jerusalem to New Mexico, walls were going up. So many lessons unlearned.”
