RaveThe HinduYou should read this book because it is a powerful, panoramic work by an exceptional writer ... McEwan is a wonderful weaver of prose and of the plot ... This is an old man’s novel in as much as it is tinged by an acute sense of reflection — never sentimental, always sharply observed, often unflinching, but inescapably from a vantage point of advancing age. That is not meant to discourage any potential reader still blessed with youth. Lessons straddles the generations very comfortably and moves across the years with more skill and ease than any novel I can recall ... A work of craft and beauty, sad and uplifting, and written with a compassion which distinguishes all great fiction.
Mohsin Hamid
MixedThe Hindu (IND)Once again, Hamid addresses in this novel one of the commanding global issues of our times — demonstrating the ability of creative writing to encourage us to look afresh at ourselves ... not of the same calibre as Hamid’s earlier work. It is topical but surprisingly lightweight. It is slender in all sorts of ways: not so much a novel as a novella, barely 40,000 words in length; short on the development of character; and all round, just a touch insipid ... Hamid purposefully avoids the word ‘black’. Those who change colour turn from white to dark. It seems they adopt new facial characteristics too, so this is not simply a darkening of skin colour but a racial transformation. However, that is not fully spelled out ... has been written in the style of a fable, with a deliberately naïve writing style, and an almost complete avoidance of speech marks. It speaks to centuries of white privilege; of building social status and identity on not being the other; of the deeply ingrained racism that continues to blight even the most economically advanced democracies. But it is a fable which is a reflection rather than offering a clear lesson ... The Black Lives Matter movement has achieved global resonance and has helped to deliver change. It has prompted a spate of books about race, most of them non-fiction, and many of more substance than this slim volume.
Douglas Stuart
RaveThe HinduThe bleakest novels are sometimes the most life affirming ... The writing is uncommonly fine. Stuart is a wonderful storyteller. He switches deftly and successfully between two timelines ... It is painful to read, simply because the sense of something really terrible and sinister looming is so overpowering ... [A] great novel.
