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SEPTEMBER SOLUTIONS

ACROSS 4. Type of market (6) 7. Put into long-term storage (8) 8. Unit of current (3) 9. Falsehoods (4) 10. Bewail (6) 11. Making; constructing (7) 12. Vertical part of a step (5) 15. Connects (5) 17. Render perplexed (7) 20. The science of light (6) 21. Pierce with a knife (4) 22. One's family (3) 23. Impetus (8) 24. Songlike cries (6) DOWN 1. Gaming tile (6) 2. Eg rooks and knights (8) 3. Chivalrous (7) 4. Small airship (5) 5. Lessens (6) 6. Bird of prey (6) 13. Formidable; impressive (8) 14. Ingest (7) 15. One who rides horses (6) 16. Pressed clothes (6) 18. Planet (6) 19. Records on tape (5)

Rachel Billington, Sherborne Literary Society

Lessons by Ian McEwan

(Jonathan Cape) £20 hardcover Sherborne Times reader offer price of £18 from Winstone’s Books

Lessons is a big book – big in length, big in ambition. The title is accurate; Ian McEwan is trying to teach us lessons through the life of Roland Baines, a cheerless hero, whose two great dramas occur near the beginning of the book, indeed one when he is eleven years old.

It would be wrong to give away this first happening, whose shock waves spread from first page to last. Enough to say it follows the example of many of McEwan’s novels and is as gripping as it’s shocking. It is lesson one for Roland, never resolved. Lesson two leaves Roland alone with a baby son, the mother having abandoned him for art. Her ambition is to become a great writer, which she does remarkably swiftly, and with lasting international fame. Question: Must you abandon all responsibilities to achieve great art? The answer here seems to be in the affirmative.

So what will Roland make of the rest of his life? McEwan tells his story against a background of mostly threatening world events, from the Suez Crisis to the Cuban Missile Crisis, the fall of the Berlin Wall to the current pandemic and climate change. None of these involve Roland personally, nor, as he admits on the last few pages, could he have hoped to change them, despite his leftwing protests and Labour Party membership. Throughout his life he is haunted by failure for nothing can live up to the gloriously terrible excitements of drama number one.

True love between adults does make a small appearance, but it is disguised for most of the book as friendship, and only recognised by Roland as cancer takes Daphne from him. Yet Daphne, a positive, lifeaffirming character, is given so sparingly of the author’s attention that she has little effect on the story. McEwan is right in thinking that learning can be part of a novel’s attraction and there is an interesting history book here about global developments since the 1950s. However, if the narrative is to be told in one person’s voice, even if in the third person, then that person needs to arouse the reader’s sympathy, or, at very least, curiosity. A break in the monotony of gloom, a glimpse of a smile or a whiff of irony would help. Youthful erotic shock and personal unhappiness cannot sustain a whole novel. It seems McEwan is determined to write a disillusioned old man’s book where nothing has meaning, no lesson teaching more than loss and sadness, a downward spiral to death.

There is a spark of hope at the very end. The cold heart of our hero is touched by passionate love for his granddaughter. But it is too little and comes too late. Nevertheless, I suspect there will be many contemporary doom-sayers who will enjoy the book’s message, even lesson, that the world is rushing downhill; no pretending otherwise. However for this reviewer, it seems a waste that such a brilliant novelist as Ian McEwan decided to sheath his talents in the lack-lustre Roland Baines.

sherborneliterarysociety.com

Rachel Billington’s latest novel is War Babies published by Universe.

Celebrating 10 Years as Sherborne’s Independent Bookseller 2012-2022 8 Cheap Street, Sherborne, Dorset DT9 3PX www.winstonebooks.co.uk Tel: 01935 816 128

Sarah Langford - Rooted

Wednesday 5th October 7pm, Winstone’s Books

London Barrister turned farmer Sarah Langford will be talking about an emotional rewilding of 200 acres of Suffolk Farmland Tickets £3. Available in-store and online at winstonebooks.co.uk