Ian McEwan, What We Can Know. Jonathan Cape hb 2025. 301 pp. Library copy
I’ve always been drawn to and (mostly) enjoyed the novels of Ian McEwan. In What We Can Know, his latest, he’s even more ambitious than usual, and there’s a strong literary element, in that a central character is a famous (fictitious) poet of the late 20C-early 21C: Francis Bundy, said to have been up there with Seamus Heaney.
The novel deals in the first half with the nature of biography, hence the title. The protagonist here is Tom Metcalfe, a literary scholar specialising in the period 1990-2030. So yes, it’s a sci-fi novel of sorts, in that it’s set in 2119, and the times we live in now have become as distant and different as the Bloomsburys are to us. He’s employed at the University of the South Downs, and he has gone to the Bodleian Library in Snowdonia. After a disastrous series of nuclear conflicts, which have exacerbated the effects of climate change, Britain (and most of Europe) has been inundated, and the habitable territory reduced to a few dozen square miles of former high ground.
I suppose dystopian novel of the future would be a better genre description than ‘sci-fi’. McEwan works in a lot of grim stuff about the lack of creature comforts and technology we take for granted today: food and other basic resources are limited in scope, transport is largely by ferry and boat, and nature has been decimated.
Tom’s on a quest to track down a long-lost poem by Blundy, a ‘Corona’, a sequence of 15 linked sonnets dedicated to his wife Vivien. He’d read this poem aloud to her and their guests at her 54th birthday party in their rural barn house. He’d handwritten it on a piece of vellum, and there were no copies. By its ‘non-existence’ it had in the century that passed ‘become a repository of dreams, of tortured nostalgia, futile retrospective anger and a focus of unhinged reverence.’
The poem, through no merit of its own but the folly of its admirers, had leapt its bounds to plunge into the mire of political economy, global history and suffering.
With its references to wild flowers, country picnics and river swims, it had taken on the kind of pastoral, idyllic reputation of the poetry of the great Romantics, and Blundy – and in particular this dinner-party ‘corona’ – was seen in the tradition of Wordsworth and Keats. Tom has spent countless hours wading through digital and other archives of largely trivial journals and records of the time, attempting, as all biographers do, to tell a story about a long-dead person’s life that combines textually attested evidence with imagination.
His quest takes him to some dangerous places, and his obsession causes him to neglect his personal relationships. He feels more affinity, in some ways, with biographer Richard Holmes in his account of reproducing RL Stevenson’s travels in the Cevennes with a donkey than he does with his wife.
We hear a great deal about the guests at that birthday dinner. As the novel progresses our perception of their relationships with each other and with the Blundys shifts dramatically, and our view of Tom’s quest and the legendary lost poem MS shifts with it. McEwan handles all this with gusto, and it’s hard not to keep turning the pages to see where he takes us with this motley cast of characters, past and present.
Then the narrative in part two is taken over by another voice, and the novel becomes something very different again. A whole new dynamic replaces what we thought we knew about that dinner party, its hosts and its guests. Plot twists and revelations resemble those found in golden age crime fiction – but all narrated with McEwan’s customary edgy originality.
This was an immersive, rewarding reading experience, yet after finishing it I felt a little like one does after eating a delicious dessert: deep pleasure followed by a realisation that it wasn’t really very nutritious. Some of the dystopian tropes, the surprises and uncovered secrets in the plot seem, in retrospect, too contrived, and the characterisation implausible. But there’s no denying McEwan’s mastery of his material, and ability to tell a cracking good story.
Most of my reading of McEwan was done pre-blog. I posted a brief note on his 2023 novel Lessons HERE.
Nice review as always, Simon! I was particularly interested in your view of this one as I already have a copy waiting for me to get the energy to read it. I was a big admirer of McEwan’s work back in the day, but I’m afraid he lost me with Saturday — I think that’s the last novel of his that I’ve read. What We Can Know sounded so interesting, however, I decided to chance it! I like dystopian fiction (always so thought provoking, to consider all the ways our world might end) and, although I’ve stopped following his work, there’s no doubt that McEwan is an enormously talented writer. It will be fun to see if this latest novel of his makes me reconsider my McEwan boycott!
I also had misgivings about him: some of his novels left me cold, while others I found excellent. This I think is one of the better ones – even though I don’t usually like dystopian fiction. This is more of a literary mystery.
By coincidence , Rachel at the Yarra Book Club has reviewed this book today too. I Like McEwan, and have read more than is reviewed on my blog, but I’m not convinced that I would like this.
It doesn’t seem overly original to me.
We’ve certainly seen all this dystopian stuff before, and I don’t much like novels set in the distant future. This one fares better than most in that this aspect is eclipsed by the personal dramas that develop, especially in the second part. I can’t say more about that without spoilers.
Hi Simon, I don’t think we have met! But I was intrigued when Lisa said you posted on this book on the same day I did. I personally found the first part quite slow as it was quite dense, as a researchers notes would be, but I felt the reward in the second half made it worthwhile. But I did find the dystopian situation a bit cliche, especially the rant at the current generation.
Hi Rachel. Thanks for dropping by. We seem to have had a fairly similar response to this uneven novel. The 2-part structure perhaps unbalances it, leaving Tom and his quest for the poem left behind somewhat.
Interesting review, Simon. The only McEwan I’ve ever read was a short satirical story which I did enjoy – perhaps time I explored him further!
I’ve read a few of the novels now, and they’re certainly varied in subject and approach. Despite my aversion to dystopian fiction, this one just about works because of the human interest story that gradually takes centre stage, and the bleak future stuff becomes less foregrounded.
Gosh, this got buried in my email, and I just re-found it this morning. Coincidentally, I’m reading this book now.
I’d only read Atonement before, but saw a Dorset travelog with Martin Clunes and Mel Giedroyc where they mentioned On Chesil Beach. That started me on going through his other books over the last month or so.
I also generally like his books. I wouldn’t say I actively hated any of them, but this one was a bit of a struggle to get into (I’m slightly less than halfway through). Glad to hear about the change in the second half. That really intrigues me.
Also I agree that dystopic books are not my favorite, I have enjoyed David Mitchell’s books that have a dystopic gloss, so I thought I might like this one.
So funny — I was reading A Child in Time, got to a particular part, and said “Hey, I know this story!” I’d seen a two-part dramatization on TV years ago.
The two part structure is strange, and I’m not sure it really works. But it’s an interesting rather than a good novel, I think. And at least it’s different from his other stuff.