Lessons by Ian McEwan

Hello. Welcome to book lounge with Gloucester book club. I'm Christina Young and a Happy New Year to you all in tonight's episode, I'm joined by Liz and Joe to talk about Ian mcewan's new book lessons, we hope you enjoy Just to forewarn you before you dive into our discussion, then maybe 1 or 2 spoilers.

When the world was still counting the cost of the second world war and the Iron Curtain had closed young Roland bangs, his life was turned upside down. Two thousand miles from his mother's. Protective love stranded at an unusual boarding school, his vulnerability attracted, piano teacher. Miss Miriam Cornell leaving, scars, as well as a memory of Love That Will Never Fade. Now, when his wife vanishes leaving him alone, with his tiny son, Roland is forced to confront the reality of his Restless. Existence, as the radiation, from Chernobyl spreads across Europe, he begins a search for answers.

That looks deep into his family history and will last for the rest of his life. From the Suez Crisis to the Cuban Missile Crisis. The fall of the Berlin wall to the current pandemic and climate change Roland, sometimes rides with the tide of history, but more often struggles against it. Haunted by lost opportunities. He seeks Solace through every possible means music literature, friends, sex politics. And finally love, cut tragically short, then love ultimately redeemed. His journey raises important questions for us all, can we take full charge of the course of our lives without damage to Those how did Global events, beyond our control shape, our lives and our memories and what can we really learn from the traumas of the past?

This book is described as epic mesmerizing and deeply Humane lessons is a Chronicle for our times, a powerful meditation on history and Humanity through the prism of one man's lifetime. Time.

Thanks Liz. Thanks Joe for joining me again on our first podcast of the New Year. I hope you had a great Christmas and New Year, and thanks for joining me. So tonight we're going to be talking about lessons by Ian McEwan, which was we were really lucky as a book club because we got given 10 free copies of this. Fantastic book back at you in about November time. I think we read it. So we thought was really important to do a podcast on it. Can I ask you? What do you what did you make of? What did you enjoy?

And what was it about? Yeah, I really enjoyed it. I mean, it is Ian mcewan's latest novel, really? Great story. It's it's what I would call a magnum, opus. It's a massive book is about roughly 500 pages long, and it's the story of the span of life of a baby boomer called Rollin Baines who was born into the post-war relics of Empire. It's about his life and loves his childhood with emotionally distant Parish in various military postings overseas, his life at boarding school later in England. It takes it all the major historical and political events of the era of his lifetime, how he was affected and inevitably, how his life was shaped by them.

Perhaps the most important lesson and for us the title that lessons most important for us, perhaps is how we are all affected by the events and actions of other people around us. But the events in the world, where life Sailors adrift on the see a stormy sea, all, this is something that Reverend has to learn. And likewise those of us of the same generation, are encouraged to come to terms with our lives in the same, sort of way. This what? Do you say about it? I'm thinking you really like the book when you read it I seem to remember you liked it anyway.

Yes, I thought it was an absolutely tremendous book, it appealed to me specifically, because all of the backdrop from when the rodent is a child. All the things, I remember, one of my earliest political memories as a girl at school was talking about the Cuban crisis, and would we be evacuated? So I would say this, This book is personal tragedy, has personal problems, but set against Global catastrophes, that are going on. At the same time that you have the personal narratives of the main characters, most of whom have quite a few problems in their lives.

But the backdrop to that is what's going on in the world and decade by decade everything that he mentioned. I remember, I cut my political teeth on some of them. If you had to put it in a nutshell I would say it's about failed motherhood. Think I would describe the story about three very different women who for all sorts of reasons because of the backdrop, going on around them, walk out on relationships with their children. It is really isn't it. And as you mentioned, you know, there's a lot of it kind of world events, crammed into this book.

So we've got the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Cuban Missile Crisis, even brings us right up to date with the pandemic, doesn't it as? And so we got this kind of soundtrack of these large-scale political events running along through this story. And that's what makes it such a big book. Know, my question to you, is it a book do things? That would appeal more to older people who perhaps, of Our Generation, who are in their 50s 60s, 70s than it would to the younger generation now, because they haven't lived through that stuff, might they not be able to To relate as well to it.

Well, it has I think probably both Generations if you like have something to learn from it, it's more likely that people that are our sort of Ages, you say 60s 70s, whatever are more likely to relate to the incidents that are talked about in the book. So the Cuban Missile Crisis, sewers agen, all these things that we're going on at the fag end of Empire, or the sort of Stone Age. The story, they're the fixed points of Roland's life but they were for us. So I suspect that people like us more likely to feel drawn maybe, but I'm sure people would like to learn about these things.

They will have heard of but, weren't would live to experience. Yeah, I mean, I think I agree with you. I mean, I wouldn't, I wouldn't put anyone off reading this book at all, but I have had comments said to me that, you know, maybe maybe if you were younger generation, it doesn't grab you as much as it. Does does this older people? Because we've been there we've, we've lived it. And as you said Liz you spent your color teenage years thinking, what were you going to get evacuated because of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

That's not easy to relate to is. If you if you look a lot younger, which is a question. I asked my children who are not young, they're in their 30s but they are very very interested. They will know about Chernobyl, for example, it's something that they would be And with and particularly the USSR, for example and Gorbachev and the collapse of the Soviet Empire in Russia. I mean, that is so currently right up to date. There's a lot of them are Googling it and finding out the history of it. So I think younger people would be interested in it and that's encouraging the, in the queue and said, he spent the whole of lockdown writing this book because, you know, he was locked away in his house for a long time and he spent the whole time, you know, focusing on writing This really large book.

So we have the main protagonist who's called Roland Baines. As you mentioned earlier, Joe, he goes through his life to me. Seems quite a passive sort of character in many ways. He seems to want someone else to take control for him. Do you agree with that? Do you think you did Joe? Yes, it is a bit like that. He's got a very forceful father. Robert beige, who was an officer in the Army, is various places where events of Empire took place so near the sneer sewers in Aden, Malaya. All these places his father probably quite a controlling man but he's he sends his son away to boarding school in England.

Ostensibly to make life easier for him and his wife, and maybe he thinks better for Roland. So he dispatches Roland off to boarding school in England, kind of passes the buck to them, to bring them up and Roland is sat there kind of looked after by the school and the school system and he's pray to all the things that go on in schools like that in terms of depicting life in an English prep school, that sort of error. Yeah, it's fantastically. Well written and accurate and I think Ian McEwan has said himself, it's not deliberately autobiographical but there are aspects of the story that reflect his own childhood.

He was similarly, brought up again in a sort of upper middle class almost Empire base background and he was sent to boarding school in England and Tiny North Africa. When he was growing up, there also is some sort of incident of giving a baby. Away on Reading Station when you know in his own family so you know you can speculate when you're reading the book on the bits that you think matru. Also there's there is some sexual abuse affecting Roland very strongly in his life and seems to affect the whole of his life.

How much would it be described? Would you describe it as abuse or early sexual experience? And how much has it affected his life? Do you think that's the main question in the Sense that whilst it's going on. I don't think he regards himself as a victim. I mean he's only 11. When the first sexual advances are made to him, he's just coming up to 16 when it finishes. I don't think he has the emotional maturity to sit back and think am I being abused? Am I being a victim? I think that's a question. He never addresses at the time, I think it certainly does that.

Mitch him. I think there's this Italian phrase, where his wife that he marries says of the woman at school, who abused him, she rewired your brain. I, she did have a lasting effect on him. I think the damage occurred because it set a pattern for the way he goes into relationships with other women, that he doesn't really come to terms with and sort out to the last love of his life, definitely the Cuban. Missile Crisis, comes upon him when he is about 15. I think it is in the book and he suddenly panicked, because he thinks he's not going to have sex before he dies, you know?

And so, he flees to his teachers house, you know, actually thinking about, I need to have sex. I must have sex before I die. And obviously, now, looking back on it, we would say over sex between an adult and a be consensual. And what did you think about all of that? Joe was that was that difficult to read? Associate various very, very interesting point that we talked about at length and argued about to some extent. In our book club meetings, it does raise the issue. If you have a teenage boy who I think, we all kind of take the view that teenage boys are raging with hormones, but the fact that the abuse was committed on him by a female teacher, a woman on a teenage boy, is that the same as?

Or as bad as A male teacher sexually abusing a girl people. Well, in my book is it's illegal it's the same. It's terrible thing to do the fan child. In this case might be a boy, might have all the teenage sex. Mad urges, the teenage boys have is irrelevant really. He's not got the emotional maturity to stand up to it and I think that comes comes quite clear as the book progresses, of course, the effect it has on his late Relationships is pretty serious. It puts him in the position of being, very demanding sexually and Alyssa.

Accuses her of them have that one stage. Your sexual needs with your ongoing, I couldn't avoid them. I think he does start to see himself as a victim, once he becomes more or less, a captive in the teachers house where he has no clothes, he has no money and he suddenly Dawns on him. Mmm, I'm a prisoner here. I didn't sign up but I think it did damage him, it put an end to his education, it put an end to any prospects of further or higher education because he ran away from school later on, when they meet towards the end of the book when she's an elderly woman in her 60s, and he's a middle-aged man, in his fifties, of course, there's only ten years between them.

So at that stage, the gap. Has really, really narrowed and I still think he has a little bit of confusion. Yes, you were the teacher, you were in the position of power. Did I actually go along with it in the way that Joe says? You know, it's something he hasn't ever sorted out no. And if something is bothered him, isn't it all through his life, really? And I think that's why he needed to go back and seek out Alyssa. If you like the with it, you know, because you needed to do that. I think in order to move on.

Sex and love quite dangerous topics in lots of Ian, mcewan's books, I've read quite a few and it comes up quite a lot. I'm thinking in particular of one chesil beach, which is a much much shorter book. I'm in fact, it's probably a novella really, rather than a novel, it's almost like something that's been denied, is now allowed. And, you know, in terms of beach that the couple were clearly in Love, But the Sex got in the way sex messed up for them because they couldn't In consummate their marriage.

So, you know, in the Coon does bring these kind of difficulties around sex into lots of his novels, which I find really interesting. Let's talk a little bit about his life or his marriage to Alyssa. Absolutely. Flees, the marriage, doesn't she? She they've had a baby. The baby is quite young and Roland is left. Holding literally holding the baby and looking after the baby while Alyssa separates from him and goes off to pursue. Ooh, her career looking from a woman's perspective. I can't condemn her because of the man suddenly realized he was going to be the greatest author in Europe, but it meant leaving his wife and child that doesn't somehow conjured up the same sense about rage.

If a woman does it, you know, women aren't supposed to abandoning his to become the greatest authors in Europe. And a lot of the early part of the book is Rollin, Rollin struggle being a young father without any Port. But I think Alyssa, she's a very complicated figure because the one thing she doesn't want to do is follow her mother's pattern. That the book talks about it is his mother how she sacrificed her creative skills if you like and what she could have done on the altar of marriage motherhood, baby.

And I think Alyssa at times attacks her quite nicely. So, I'm not going to live your life again. I'm not going to make mistakes you did. And I think this Idea of, can you be a mother and creative genius if you like other two? Yeah, incompatible. What did you think about her abandoning her, child? Joe did that, did that raise any feelings in you or well? Yes, it did. I mean, I read it is right that the tendency many of us tend to look at that for a situation, perhaps a bit overly critical. When it is the woman, who's the one Doing the nominal abandoning.

Whereas kind of a bit of a cliche that we see, in society, far, more evidence perhaps of the father, doing the abandoning, if you like clear enough to lift some sort of irresponsible life of drinking and gambling and messing around, where she's gone off to pursue a life of art and literature, rather more, high-minded ideals. So, we, we tend to be little bit more sympathetic. Actually two walls of the sir. I didn't particularly like her because of because of the fact that she abandoned her husband and child, yes, I am aware of trying to avoid the automatic knee-jerk reaction of around blaming her for, I mean, I think well, as you can see, but I felt that Roland was often felt to me.

Indecisive he found it difficult to make decisions. He was really in a relationship with Daphne for a number of years. Is it was like, you know, they were going to get married, then they weren't, you know, it was, it was always this kind of indecisiveness with Roland. And sometimes I felt like I wanted to shake him Neil and make a decision Roland and stick to it. And also, I felt that he always felt that somehow his experiences and possibly particularly the sexual experience when he was young, and the fact that Alyssa and kind of left him, meant it held him back from, here's what he could have achieved in his career.

I mean, Clearly quite talented a piano player. And, you know, that's how I mean, you started the lesson starts with in learning to play the piano at school, and he was very good at it, and he could probably have done better with it. But he didn't did he, because he just did ended up playing in hotel feuilles in the evening, to entertain the guests. And I kind of always felt like he, he felt that he could have achieved more, but in a way, he'd been held back by having to bring up. his son on his own and actually that made me reflect on what it can be like for women that women can't always, you know, because they are in the role usually looking after their children, bringing up the children but they don't always fulfill their potential either and I thought, yeah, it's kind of fair this way around, I feel, but I think the narrative is littered with if you like abandoned children Runners mother Rosalind Because of the scandal in her marriage for her first marriage.

She gets rid of her to existing children, they are sent to live with other relatives because she wants to keep the Scandal quiet. She has an illegitimate child that she hands to a stranger on a railway platform. When the baby's only 6 weeks old Alyssa, abandons. Lawrence the Child, she had because she wants to pursue her creative career. Her own mother brought her up feeling that she was an impediment to anything that she might have done. So, I think there's a lot of abandonment issues in this novel.

Yeah, I agree. What happens towards the end of the book, he goes off to find. Alyssa. Doesn't he to try and sort it had his head out about what happened in to confront her does his journey throughout the book. Important questions for all of us. Can we all? Can we really take charge of the course of our lives without damaging other people? Because there's a lot of damage being done throughout this book to people, as you were saying there's a lot of Abandonment stuff lot of damage happening. Can we actually get through a life without damaging other people?

And how did Global events beyond our control and actually shape our lives and our memories are not in control of Our Lives? Lives like that. As I said at the beginning, the important lesson that we get from this, is that our lives course of Our Lives is dictated by people around us events around us how they affect us, when rodent is proactive, when, before the wall Falls in Germany, where he speaks at length about East Berlin and the star Z and what life was like there and he goes over there many times to meet people if you Story of Florida Ruth a couple that he meets who have two young children, who fall foul of the Stasi in East Germany, who are living a fairly blameless life professionals, and their world is turned upside down and she becomes cleaner.

He becomes working in a factory. Their children are taken away from any idea of furthering my education so we can make choices about. Am I going to walk out? out on my family, what we can't do is make choices Again this big political backdrop that mcewan's writing against because huge issue suddenly boil up that sweepers up in in the wave of it and we have no control over that. Yeah, sure. And what can we really learn from the traumas of the past? Can we learn mean, do we learn from the traumas of the past?

Yes, you can add as to whether we do all the time. I'm not so sure we're not great at learning from the lessons of History. And we tend to fall into the mistake of ignoring history, thinking of quitting it thinking that we are in control of events, which of course, is complete total. We are not in control of events in the queue and puts words in Alyssa's mouth when she's writing. But part of the story in Germany talks about a group of activists in Munich during the war who at Great risk to themselves, try to in a very small scale.

Gail put out some anti-nazi propaganda, it's a true story and they will get arrested and they are put to death. Alyssa has a rant about those and I could actually have some sympathy with it that this story has become part of them. Post-holocaust, German narrative, the good Germans we did try. You know, we didn't all sit there sort of looking the other way when the, you know, the concentration camps smoke was going up. We did our bit and he McEwen puts these words. It is, it was a fit Leaf, put on a whole Nations conspiracy of Silence.

So if you like by creating a false narrative, this was just a handful of students in Munich. I mean it didn't go very far. But it's become, it's become a bit, like Plucky, England, winning Dunkirk. Well, we didn't win it, we would have defeated with. We lost half our army and it's just idea that we did learn. And you know, this is the post narrative reason that we learnt remember the bit in the book where role until the list is written. This book doesn't, she's written a fantastic book. She's a, you know, she's the best author in Europe and apparently and Roland's, got the book and he thinks that it's about him, actually.

He thinks that he's in this book. He thinks that the B he's writing about domestic abuse in the book was about him. You know, he's being quite Vain about that but she's always looking for himself in her novel. And it turns out, he tells him that he's not, he's not in her novel, that she's borrowed bits from loads of people that she's known over the years and she's put them together and made this character, but it's not, it's not Roland. And I found that quite funny. Did you do you get that Joe? Would you would you if you were in, if you were Roland, would you have been looking for yourself in the books that she had written?

So I can see why he was thinking, what on Earth is she said about me and you that is an understandable sense of vulnerability that he feels. He's the It her mind, he's the one who's at fault, why she and he's trying to make sure that she's not telling a load of bull. He buys about him and understandable. He feels like that I probably would feel similarly. I think he had some justification because there was enough of her biographical detail out in the world to tie up with dates and places and people.

So she talks about walking out on me, young man of a certain place in London and leaving a baby behind and that was the characters that she used in the book. So I did have some sympathy with Roland that, you know, readership could assume that it was hell and it was him. Yes. Yeah. Okay. We're coming towards the end of the podcast now, but before we finish, I need to ask you. This is a big book for a book club to read as and her only mind that you probably take a month, if you're in a book club to read.

This book would you still do recommend it for a book club read and discussion? Yes, I would as yes, it's a fantastic book. I am a big fan of mcewan's. I think he's a brilliant writer, the best of Our Generation, the modern generation of writers. It's a long book. Some of it is a bit difficult and I can see that book clubs might find some members were struggled a little bit with parts of it or the length of it. For me, it was worth its weight in gold and I think we were very lucky to be offered the opportunity to read and review the book.

Yeah. And I'm glad really that I read it. It was a long book but I was almost sorry, in a way when it came to an end because the backdrop to, it was so familiar to me, it had a very, very telling that at the end where he sort of his talking to his young granddaughter, sorry about him house. Is it going to finish? And he said, well, that's it, isn't it? I am going to have to leave the story but because I will die. I don't know how it will finish his. He said, something about how hard it is to imagine that you have been removed from the story and that really made me impression but I thought it was brilliant.

I didn't mind the length of it, I thoroughly enjoyed it and I think book clubs could look at it in different ways. Some might want to concentrate and all the political backdrop others might want to Straight just on the personal stories of the main characters. There's such a lot in it, you could go either way and having read lots of in the kids. But this is a quite an exception in the fact that it is so long because actually in the, you know, recent years, his books have been a lot lot shorter than their.

So, you know, you can tell that you had all that time during lockdown to actually concentrate on writing such a large Magnus Opus, as you said, Joe. So yeah, I would thoroughly recommend it. I thought it was an absolutely brilliant. Brilliant read and you know, if you like Ian McEwan definitely read it because you can't miss this one out, it really is a fantastic book. But there are they were a few people in our book club. Who did you did struggle with it a little bit but by and large most people scored it.

Really highly. I think we don't recommend it. So if you get a chance to get hold of a copy or if you were lucky enough to get one for Christmas and Delve into it and I think you'll get sucked into the story, really, really quickly. And I hope you all enjoy it. We will be back with another podcast in about a month's time and not sure yet which one we're going to do. There are several on the list but we will be back.

Thank you for listening to Gloucester book clubs podcasts. You can find us on Spotify. Anchor, FM, Google and apple podcasts. And many more We look forward to having you join us again soon. We look forward to having you join us again soon.

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