PositiveSydney Morning Herald (AUS)With Lessons, McEwan has not just tried something new (again!), but made a complete departure from all precedent ... A baggy, rambling story of a life over seven decades ... As if pleasurably unwinding into late life and defying past form, however, McEwan widens rather than narrows the focus ... Soon we find ourselves spending time with these secondary characters as our protagonist floats in and out, almost becoming a side character as the narrative takes the meandering shape of an actual life. It is almost as if McEwan is rejecting his own art ... When McEwan is on his preferred territory...Lessons contains passages of the best vintage. When McEwan reaches out for the entire world, on the other hand, the writing can become a shopping list of short-hand references ... I think Lessons is the best of the third-phase McEwans, without returning to the heights of the middle years. If that sounds like praising with faint damnation, even the lesser McEwans are more thought-provoking and worth reading than almost all other contemporary fiction. It’s impossible not to admire a writer of McEwan’s reputation who is always risking a new adventure, and he has surely earned the right to do something different – again.
