Ian McEwan in Conversation with Jon Cook 19.5.23

 

Ian McEwan’s latest novel “Lessons”

Explored in conversation with Jon Cook.

19/5/23    

For the second time this Spring the Lit. Soc. had to seek out a larger venue to accommodate those attracted by the prospect of hearing the celebrated and prolific novelist, Ian McEwan, discussing his latest novel “Lessons” with Jon Cook.  They might have mentally echoed Disraeli in the Commons “We come here for fame” although in this case Fame resided in the aura enveloping McEwan. 

In a relaxed exchange with his interlocutor, our guest laid out the lines of his novel’s plot with any risk of “spoilers” likely outweighed by the attraction of his fluent, elegant prose and intriguing ideas. The book incorporated some autobiographical elements as it followed the central character, Roland Baines, through a life whose span neatly mirrored the author’s own with real events intruding at various junctures in the narrative.  McEwan’s inversion of two topical themes commands the reader’s attention.  At boarding school, the teenage Roland is groomed by the attractive, dominating female piano teacher and the pair embark on a two-year long affair.  As a consequence, the boy becomes sexually restless and has difficulty forming stable relationships with women.  Later in life, he tracks his former lover down and confronts her with the grooming and abuse but finds he is suffering from some variant of Stockholm Syndrome and his love for her stops him making a formal accusation. 

His personal sexual odyssey reaches a temporary haven in marriage to a German woman who, in another example of role inversion, abandons him and their baby to pursue a literary career in Germany.  The pair briefly meet in Berlin as the Wall comes down and she presents him with a copy of her first novel which he realises is a work of genius and that she is destined to be Europe’s leading novelist; an achievement that would have been impossible had she remained in South London as Roland’s wife.  Recognising that she is ill and that her death is imminent, he ponders on the realisation that her literary legacy will outlive them both and on the mediocre level of his own attainments. 

As always at literary events, there was intense interest in the technical elements of the writer’s creative process.  Ian told us that he did not approach his writing with a play book but allowed the plot to unfold as he wrote.  He took issue with Virginia Woolf’s assertion that character was dead (contradicted by her own “Mrs. Dalloway”) and observed that Roland’s character in part changed with time but other features remained the same throughout “Lessons”.  Further tips on creative writing were elicited as our speaker patiently fielded a battery of questions from an engaged and enthusiastic audience.  Judging from the queue for book signings at the end, few attendees would have echoed the Gryphon in “Alice in Wonderland”; “…. they’re called lessons …. because they lessen from day to day.”