![]() ![]() ![]() Alissa despises her own mother as a failure, a promising young writer who, after marrying Heinrich Eberhardt, an associate of the audacious White Rose, a clandestine clique dedicated to overthrowing the Nazi régime, settles with him for “a safe life and a dull marriage.” Absconding to Germany, where she grew up, Alissa refuses any contact with her husband or son. “I know mthrhd would have sunk me,” she scrawls. In the note she leaves behind, Alissa, who has recently given birth to their son, Lawrence, explains that she felt suffocated by the demands of family life. The year is 1986, and, as anxiety radiates throughout Europe over fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear accident, Roland’s wife is missing. Memory yields to awareness of present circumstances. From the time he is 14 until he is 16, she will use him as her sex toy. ![]() As Roland struggles with the complexities of Bach, Miriam Cornell, his stern but seductive music teacher, pinches the boy near his crotch, leaving ambiguous sensations that resonate across the years. Eleven-year-old Roland Baines sits at the keyboard in an Ipswich boarding school where his father, a captain in the British army posted in Libya, has deposited him. Ian McEwan begins “ Lessons,” his 17th published novel, with the “insomniac memory” of a piano lesson. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |