Lessons

The lessons of the title are, as neatly pictured on the cover, the piano lessons that Roland Baines takes when he starts at boarding school in the 1950s. The effects of those lessons tumble through his life. Before this he’s lived a seemingly idyllic childhood with his parents on a British army base in Libya. It’s a sweeping saga of a book that keeps returning to the effects of those piano lessons and his piano teacher on his life.

I liked the wide scope of the book. It’s a long fictional autobiography and there are many pages and masses of minor characters. They way these are introduced and forgotten makes it feel like a real life. Some characters returned into Roland’s life after many years, others just walked by never to be seen again, others seemed to be minor and grew into greater roles. It’s a tangle, as is anyone’s life, but it’s entertaining. It’s the sort of book you can get lost in and I got more and more absorbed by it as the book went on. I read the final section in one several hours long stint one sunny afternoon whilst I was sat on a bench in the churchyard. It was a nice place to hang out and read and I should do that kind of thing more often.

I hadn’t realised how both many of McEwan’s books I’d read (this is the eleventh), and also how many I hadn’t read (it looks like he’s published eighteen full length novels and counting). Though I’ve certainly liked some a lot more than others, that’s fine by me, and I think at this point I’m probably planning on reading the lot as and when I come across them.