What We Can Know by Ian McEwan review: 'his masterpiece'
Some of Ian McEwan’s earlier novels may have been lacking in imagination, but that’s certainly not the case with his latest book, writes Allan Massie
Though Ian McEwan is more than ten years younger that I am, we began publishing at around the same time. He was an immediate success, first with neat sometimes rather nasty short stories, then with short and elegant novels. He soon rose to the top and has remained there.
I confess I didn't care greatly for some of his work - I thought it too neat, too careful, and wondered if his characters even surprised him. Of course, there is no reason why a novelist shouldn't exercise a strict control over his creations. Nabokov once said that when he wished a character to cross the street, the character obeyed him. Some of McEwan's early work was a bit like that. He flourished, however, and was soon recognized by many as the outstanding English novelist of his generation, outleaping his friends Martin Amis and Julian Barnes. But often I was quite happy when his books didn't come my way for review.
Surprisingly he has lightened up over the years, and become more daring - and enjoyable - in his seventies. Lessons, published three years ago, was a very good novel, and so is What We Can Know, which is ambitious, daring and very enjoyable.
Its theme is fashionable, but, happily, not depressingly so. The dreaded Climate Change has taken place. After a number of tsunamis, England - Britain indeed, but McEwan despite his Highland name, is a very English, London and Home Counties novelist - has become an archipelago, with all its valleys submerged.
Life, even what we recognize as civilised, life, is possible and has resumed. So, pleasingly, this can't be called a dystopian novel. It is rather an expression of hope, a recognition of Man's adaptability. People can surmount horrors and repair damage.
In some ways the life that is resumed is a life that is familiar to us. One character is obsessed with recovering a once famous poem which, though famous, was only delivered in speech, never published. I like this; it is both credible and agreeable. Most alternative fiction is grim; think of Orwell and HG Wells, or indeed Stephen King. But, a true humanist, McEwan believes in civilization and culture and in the possibility of their recapture. As climate change has become reality, the reality of human spirit and intelligence makes some sort of recovery possible. In a surprising way, this is a happy novel.
Most novelists reach their peak, do their best work, in mid-career. Some then repeat themselves, then fall away - they have exhausted their material and their new work is less imaginative that what they did in their prime. It is very rare for a novelist to write his best work when he has been writing novels for half a century, but McEwan has done just that. If several of his much-praised novels written in middle-life seemed to me lacking in lively imagination, he has now written what may be judged his masterpiece. Remarkable. This novel has a rare and delightful vitality.
What We Can Know, by Ian McEwan, Vintage, £22
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