There’s a lot of new stuff in your latest novel Ian McEwan (Aldershot, United Kingdom, 1948), one of the rare writers who won the admiration of both readers and critics. that label McAcabro The writer who accompanied him in his first steps into the world of fiction and who also became one of the most classic English novelists for a long time. ‘Lessons’ (Spanish and Catalan Anagrama) is one of his most comprehensive works, but above all it is the one in which he includes the most autobiographical material, to the point that much of what happens to his hero, Roland Baines, can be confusing. It is about the life of McEwan himself, a jazz pianist and journalist in his seventies. In other words, the son of a soldier who lived in Libya until the age of 11, strict boarding school After a while, when she was unhappy, custody of her children was left to her. contradictory separation When he turned fifty, he learned that his mother had given up one of her children for adoption. unknown brotherDavid, because while his father was first her lover and then her second husband (and the author’s father), she was still married to the first person to die in the Normandy landings.
“I have been asked many times when I will write my article. memoriesand in a sense they are what they are – McEwan explains via Zoom from his country home, two hours from London – because so much of my family life is there. My mother placed an ad in the newspaper, saying she would give her six-month-old baby to someone else, and handed him over to the family who answered her at the train station. is a war story, many babies were born under strange circumstances and discovered their true stories years later. My novel is about how historical events, especially wars, leave their mark on our lives and reveal various joys and shadows. This is happening in Ukraine right now; The conflict changed the lives of many children. “Unlike a work of nonfiction, a novel allows me to delve into the most intimate emotions.”
tough advice
Like his protagonist, McEwan found himself in the midst of a more pronounced seclusion than he usually practiced when writing his novels. I didn’t have to travel, promote, or attend literary festivals. He devoted himself to writing for ten hours a day, seven days a week, and began to act out important events in his life that taught him lessons about loss or moments of fulfillment. The result is a novel that works. balance, vital journey. “If you confirm that you have learned something at the age of 75, you run the risk of falling into cliché in your writing, and no young person will be of any use to anything I say on the subject. So the only way to solve this is to tell a life story, and that’s what I did. This novel is the only advice I can give”.
There are two main moments in the novel; Both star women who do not behave as traditionally expected of them. It’s a situation piano professor The 25-year-old man is the man who abused Baynes when he was just a 14-year-old, and he is abusive to his first wife, a German who made the ruthless decision to pursue her husband and six-month-old son without bond. a literary profession that led him to become one of the most noted writers of his country. These two founding traumas lead the character to evoke his life through historical moments that left their mark on him. Suez crisisThe beginning of the end of British imperialism, which McEwan experienced with anxiety in Libya when he was 8 years old. Brexit, the pandemic or the attack on the Capitol. It is impossible not to think that McEwan is taking stock of a life filled with the weight of years and asking himself important questions. But he still lists responsibilities as follows: “I wondered to what extent we decide our options in life, to what extent chance intervenes. If your mom and dad had made love five seconds later, you would be different. “Even in the society you grow up in, you are not the only one who chooses your friends.” He also adds: “IMemory is a great tool, but it’s also misleading. Lately, I’ve been observing that moments from my childhood come up with a vividness that I didn’t know even when I was 30, and sometimes I can’t remember what happened three years ago. They can deepen the fictions better with all these chiaroscuros.
men’s desire
In some of the author’s most famous novels, ‘The Traveller’s Pleasure’, ‘Redemption’ or ‘Chesil Beach’, A powerful moment of erotic desire determines the fate of its characters. The same situation is repeated in ‘Lessons’, which leads the author to reflect on the distrust that has accompanied the issue of male desire in public debates in recent years. “Two or three years ago a young novelist told me that he no longer dared to write about this subject, and I was horrified because it was such an important subject. Philip Roth He advised me to write as if my parents were dead and not worry about disturbing them, so I followed his advice. But I also talked too much Martin Amis We talked about masculine desire in literary creation and agreed that it was not about talking about conquest or domination, but about mutual experiences, the culmination of our adult lives. Since the late writer and his friend sneaked into the conversation, McEwan has been opening up about his loss and how it affected his ‘dream team’ of Barnes, Rushdie and Ishiguro. “James Fenton, who is part of our generation and is very funny, was wondering who would be after us. This made us shudder because part of our lives went with it. I think we had a great time, but it’s true that our living space is all male and no one questions that. So now we disappear, we make room for others, and that’s a good thing. “We need other narratives and other voices.”