Lessons: A novel

Short review: Argh.Long review: I am an Ian McEwan fan. Since I read [b:Atonement by McEwan, Ian. (Anchor,2003) Paperback 133999282 Atonement by McEwan, Ian. (Anchor,2003) Paperback Ian McEwan https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1689665703l/133999282.SY75.jpg 2307233] I have been reading all his older books and reading each new one soon after it comes out. For months I have regretted not buying the hardcover of Lessons after reading the first few pages at The Tattered Cover airport shop back in November. Now I'm glad I didn't. That being said, McEwan is still an author I can reliably go to for a good book after reading a string of duds. The beginning of this book, and what appears to be its basic premise, is incredibly interesting: a man in his late thirties is troubled by the affair he had as a teenager with his piano teacher and his disconnection from his parents. His life is looking up, however, as he's finally married to a talented German writer and they're raising an infant son. He wakes up one morning, however, and finds her gone. The police are coming by to investigate.Sounds like the beginning of the kind of plot I've come to expect from McEwan, who writes in his own particularly detached and somewhat humorous style, commenting psychologically and ironically on the choices his characters make and the LESSONS they learn. But in most of McEwan's books, stuff blows up and people get murdered and investigated, and so on. I really thought myself above requiring stuff to blow up in order to enjoy a book, but I guess I'm not. Nothing would have to blow up if the main character of this book wasn't a total dud. Despite all the crap that happens to him, the main character of Lessons, Roland Baines, learns absolutely nothing. He is a weak, moderately uninteresting, and harmless character who goes through life pissed off about the things going on around him, absorbed in politics and historical events and not seeing that he's a decision-maker capable of being above all that crap.The worst part is that I can't tell if McEwan is commenting on people who get really worked up about Brexit, Trump, COVID and, in their day, Thatcher and Reagan and Gorbachev and yet do nothing but pour another glass of wine. Maybe McEwan is such a person and he is just writing about the people he knows and commenting, in some bizarre way, about himself and his family and friends. I highly doubt this second option, because this book seems, at times, to be making fun of such people. If there's any lesson in Lessons, it's that if you spend your life wrapped up in external events instead of examining yourself and making choices, you will be really really boring.And that's the problem with this book: it's boring. Now, it's not half as boring as it would be if written by half as charming and talented a writer as McEwan, but it is, in the end, just boring. The main character is a boring, dull, oversteamed broccoli. He's a normal person. I kept waiting for the weird BFG-style twist like the ones that come at the end of Atonement or [b:Sweet Tooth 16001708 Sweet Tooth Ian McEwan https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347295553l/16001708.SY75.jpg 19137260], some kind of trick of narration that could atone for reading about such a boring person, but it never came. Maybe the book Roland's ex-wife writes about their marriage isthe bookyou're readingRIGHT NOW!But nope. Just in case there was this kind of narrative twist, I was in a hurry to finish the book but couldn't really bother to pick it up. Again, nope. Maybe this was the point McEwan is trying to make: we live in exciting times, we always live in exciting times despite our lives seeming really boring, or perhaps there's drama in every ordinary life. Maybe, but I don't want to read about boring people. He's played with characters like this before: Robbie in Atonement is not that interesting of a guy until something horrible happens to him; the main character in [b:Machines Like Me 42091291 Machines Like Me Ian McEwan https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1548089510l/42091291.SY75.jpg 65638827] is not a particularly interesting person, but he's in a really interesting situation at the start of the book (and the title gives us the irony right away). Then again, in Atonement, Robbie's not the main character (Briony is), and in Machines Like Me the main character deals with his situation. He makes choices. Same with Solar, whose main character was a scumbag (now there's a literary experiment worth reading!). The characters of [b:On Chesil Beach by McEwan Ian (2008-06-10) Paperback 136522262 On Chesil Beach by McEwan Ian (2008-06-10) Paperback Ian McEwan https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png 1698999] are “perfectly normal,” but they are involved in an intense struggle, and they are, in their own way, very interesting people. They at least struggle through their challenges and come out the other side. It's dramatic, and the characters manage to be dramatic and interesting, despite dealing with what is, in the end, a rather commonplace problem. That's what's so interesting about it; it's a window into a struggle that plenty of people have, and it does manage to comment on its times without crushing the characters and making them into victims.Roland, the main character of Lessons, on the other hand, is just a limp noodle subject to everything that happens around him (he even says this straight out late in the book, that he's powerless). The best he can do is give people lectures about how East Germany is bad but so is Margaret Thatcher. I'm not asking him to turn into Jack Ryan and take down The Soviet Union and climate change in one chapter, but he could at least not bitch and complain like a real person. I have been thinking about this a lot lately: about why books and movies are about people getting killed and stuff blowing up or magic and dragons and spaceships and criminals who are way smarter than most actual criminals. It's because we don't want to read about actual people or our own lives, which are, thankfully (I hope) pretty boring. But we can still make choices, and we want to see what choices are made by people in trying circumstances; we want to see the smart crooks get defeated or defeat someone unjust; we want to see how the hero who just has a sword can defeat the sorcerer or the dragon who is, apparently, so much more powerful, or who cows “normal” people (like us?) into obedience. We don't want to read a 420 page book about people who sit around moaning about powerful people, whether that's politicians or our parents or our ex-wives or a woman who sexually coerced us as a teenager. That's what Lessons is.I will still pick up McEwan's next book, and read and re-read more of his old ones; they're great. And if you're a McEwan fan like me, you're going to read this book. Don't skip it, but be ready to wait for something interesting to happen. It doesn't. I think maybe that's the point. An interesting point, sure, but not an interesting one to watch unfold.