They are the substance of his story, and the source of many of his “lessons.” Two books about growth and maturation underlie his story - Flaubert’s “A Sentimental Education” and Joseph Conrad’s “Youth.” The former dramatizes a relationship between a young man and an older woman while the latter provides a guideline for the intensity of youthful experiences. His life, however, is lived through and marked by experiences with several powerful women. Having made a mess of his high school education and endured a subsequent ‘lost decade,’ he chose in his twenties to read widely and became an “ardent autodidact.” Hence, he is at home with figures like Montaigne, Elizabeth Bishop, and Seamus Heaney among many others. Rather he lives quietly in London, playing piano in a Mayfair hotel and writing copy for a greeting-card firm.īut above all he commits himself to raising his son Lawrence as a single father.
Roland grows up to be a sometimes writer, composing poetry and occasional essays while later seeking privately to write a history of his times he is, however, far from a disciplined practitioner.
Raised in Tripoli by a military father and his mother Rosalind (“army wife, child of her times”), Roland lives out his unusual set of personal adventures while consciously observing both English and world events. It traces the life of a sensitive and observant Englishman named Roland Baines but it is also a richly detailed history of his - and our - times from the 1950s to the present. Ian McEwan’s latest novel “Lessons” is a powerful and amazing reading experience.
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