Lessons
Ian McEwan
Sep 2022 · RB Media · Narrated by Simon McBurney
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17 hr 36 min
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When the world is still counting the cost of the Second World War and the Iron Curtain has descended, young Roland Baines’s life is turned upside down. He is two thousand miles from his mother’s protective love, stranded at an unusual
boarding school, when his vulnerability attracts his piano teacher, Miriam Cornell, leaving scars as well as a memory of love that will never fade.
Twenty-five years later, Roland’s wife mysteriously vanishes, and he finds himself alone with their baby son. He is forced to confront the reality of his rootless existence. As the radiation from the Chernobyl disaster spreads across Europe, he
begins a search for answers that looks deep into his family history and will last for the rest of his life.
From the Suez and Cuban Missile crises and the fall of the Berlin Wall to the Covid pandemic and climate change, Roland sometimes rides with the tide of history but more often struggles against it. Haunted by lost opportunities, he seeks solace
through every possible means—literature, travel, friendship, drugs, sex, and politics. A profound love is cut tragically short. Then, in his final years, he finds love again in another form. His journey raises important questions. Can we take
full charge of the course of our lives without damage to others? How do global events beyond our control shape our lives and our memories? And what can we learn from the traumas of the past?
Epic, mesmerizing, and deeply humane, Lessons is a chronicle for our times—apowerful meditation on history and contingency through the prism of one man’s lifetime.
boarding school, when his vulnerability attracts his piano teacher, Miriam Cornell, leaving scars as well as a memory of love that will never fade.
Twenty-five years later, Roland’s wife mysteriously vanishes, and he finds himself alone with their baby son. He is forced to confront the reality of his rootless existence. As the radiation from the Chernobyl disaster spreads across Europe, he
begins a search for answers that looks deep into his family history and will last for the rest of his life.
From the Suez and Cuban Missile crises and the fall of the Berlin Wall to the Covid pandemic and climate change, Roland sometimes rides with the tide of history but more often struggles against it. Haunted by lost opportunities, he seeks solace
through every possible means—literature, travel, friendship, drugs, sex, and politics. A profound love is cut tragically short. Then, in his final years, he finds love again in another form. His journey raises important questions. Can we take
full charge of the course of our lives without damage to others? How do global events beyond our control shape our lives and our memories? And what can we learn from the traumas of the past?
Epic, mesmerizing, and deeply humane, Lessons is a chronicle for our times—apowerful meditation on history and contingency through the prism of one man’s lifetime.
When the world is still counting the cost of the Second World War and the Iron Curtain has descended, young Roland Baines’s life is turned upside down. He is two thousand miles from his mother’s protective love, stranded at an unusual
boarding school, when his vulnerability attracts his piano te...
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1 review
Jerry Sura
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February 12, 2023
tedious boring without insight
About the author
Ian McEwan was born in Aldershot, England on June 21, 1948. He received a B.A. in English Literature from the University of Sussex and an M.A. in English Literature from the University of East Anglia. He writes novels, plays, and collections of short stories including In Between the Sheets, The Cement Garden, The Comfort of Strangers, The Innocent, Black Dogs, The Daydreamer, Enduring Love, Sweet Tooth, The Children Act and Nutshell. He has won numerous awards including the 1976 Somerset Maugham Award for First Love, Last Rites; the 1987 Whitbread Novel Award and the 1993 Prix Fémina Etranger for The Child in Time; the 1998 Booker Prize for Fiction for Amserdam; the 2002 W. H. Smith Literary Award, the 2003 National Book Critics' Circle Fiction Award, the 2003 Los Angeles Times Prize for Fiction, and the 2004 Santiago Prize for the European Novel for Atonement; and the 2006 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Saturday.
Ian McEwan was born in Aldershot, England on June 21, 1948. He received a B.A. in English Literature from the University of Sussex and an M.A. in English Literature from the University of East Anglia. He writes novels, plays, and collections of short stories including In Between the Sheets, The C...
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