Book after Book

Welcome to the blog tour for Lessons by Ian McEwan! More about the book… While 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. Stranded at boarding school, 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, as the radiation from the Chernobyl disaster spreads across Europe, Roland's wife mysteriously vanishes and he is forced to confront the reality of his rootless existence and look for answers in his family history. From 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, politics, sex and love. His journey raises important questions. Can we take full charge of th...

(…) what William James wrote on forgetting a word or name; a tantalizing, empty shape remains, almost but not quite defining the idea it once contained. Even as you struggle against the numbness of poor recall, you know precisely what the forgotten thing is not. From "Saturday" by Ian McEwan As I struggle each day to find exactly the right word in the right language, I like this quote because it clearly describes the feeling of knowing what you want to say even when you're not able to retrieve from your mind the combination of letters you're looking for. What are your favourite quotes? Share them on Twitter or in the comments below!