There are bed books, train books, sofa books, kitchen table books, but only a special sort of disposable artefact is a bath book. A long soak is made even more pleasurable with a good read, but steam ruins the paper. So my bath books tend to be literary mags (ones I’m not in!) and proof copies. I’ve had the proof of ‘Lessons’ by Ian McEwan lying around since its publication date of September 2022. It was time to give it a go.
It’s taken me a long time to read because it’s a 500pp whopper (and not because I don’t bathe enough). However it feels appropriate to take the story of Roland Baines from schooldays to (almost) demise in a leisurely way, watching his years inch by. Eleven years old in 1959, he’s sent to a bizarre boarding school (perhaps all boarding schools are bizarre) where he takes piano lessons with the terrifying Miriam Cornell. What happens in her lessons is going to profoundly alter the course of his life.
On one level the story is an examination of female evil. Two characters perpetrate acts not confined to but more associated with males: child sexual abuse and abandonment of children. Miss Cornell’s sinister hold over the boy affects his relationship with women thereafter. Alissa, his beloved German-born wife, simply disappears one day, deserting Roland and their young son, Laurence, and leaving a ‘don’t try to find me’ note. Emotionally, how this connects with the ghastly piano teacher is slowly teased out.
Alissa’s German heritage brings a whole tranche of European history into the novel, from the White Rose movement, a group of students who fatally opposed Hitler, to the erection and eventual fall of the Berlin Wall. Roland’s empathy for German language and culture, which begins at the keyboard, runs through the story, as he keeps up with his in-laws and German friends, not just for the sake of his son. Miriam Cornell has tainted forever his musical talent; instead of the concert pianist we are told he could easily have been, he tinkles out tunes in a hotel bar, slipping in more demanding fare when he thinks he can get away with it.
Roland is a complex, well-drawn character who is not especially likeable or admirable; perhaps this is due to the early damage he suffered. One moment near the end had me writhing in fury at his incompetence. ‘You had ONE JOB!’ I seethed, but then sensed the presence of McEwan, saying: ‘What are you getting so het up about? It’s just a story.’ That’s where he’s so skilled: drawing attention to the fictiveness even as he manipulates our responses. A coldly plotting author is always discernable behind the text, but it’s hard not to get pulled in to the emotional turmoil despite that.
For all its depth and scope ‘Lessons’ is not a difficult read. Uncomfortable at times, demanding, complex – but at no point would you feel you’re not in the hands of a master.
‘Lessons’ by Ian McEwan is published by Jonathan Cape