Ian McEwan’s best novel in years, until it wasn’t
Ian McEwan earlier this year. Photo by TimDuncan, own work, CC BY-SA 4.0
It’s hard to disagree with the Financial Times (and, in fact, almost every outlet), What we Can Know is “Ian McEwan’s most entertaining novel in years”. It starts out that way and stays entertaining for two-thirds of the book.
As for the last part, a substantial section…hmmm. (Click here for my blog on Mick Herron‘s disappointing Clown Town.)
The main part of the story is set 100 years in the future. It truly is a wonderful lookback at today, the twenty-teens,
as well as the late 20th century.
As a form of navel-gazing, it’s rather fascinating to read the thoughts of Tom Metcalfe, a 22nd century English Literature university lecturer, on how we live in the 21st century. He is awestruck by the abundance of fruit and veg, aeroplane trips, car travel on plentiful roads. “…the past that from here [2219] seems whole and precious,” he muses.
For, the 21st century was vibrant compared to the 22nd. Metcalfe realises that back then, ideas of progress and change had not completely vanished and the sea had not reclaimed large swaths of land, leaving Britain, for instance, a 38-mile archipelago.
For all its climate anxieties, polarisation and sense of impending disaster, the 21st century remained full of possibilities. As Metacalfe realises, back then, life was not a dull testament to this gritty reality “we scraped through”.
This is Ian McEwan at its best. I was deeply invested in Metcalfe’s search for a missing poem written in 2014 and read aloud just once. The contrast between the 22nd and 21st centuries is riveting.
And then, it all comes to a juddering halt.
Another book takes over. Abruptly, our attention is commandeered by another speaker and the glorious promise of this book fails to be redeemed.
Ian McEwan is the celebrated alumnus of my writing programme – the University of East Anglia’s MA in Creative Writing (Prose Fiction). Here’s my sense of what would’ve happened had his classmates workshopped the second half of the manuscript, or a tutor mentored him on it, or an agent looked at the work sans the famous Ian McEwan name: they would’ve said these are two separate books, go back and integrate them.
Also read: Why I feel shortchanged by Mick Herron and Ian McEwan
