A love story about both people and the words they leave behind, a literary detective story which reclaims the present from our sense of looming catastrophe and imagines a future world where all is not quite lost.
Brash and busy ... It’s a piece of late-career showmanship...from an old master. It gave me so much pleasure I sometimes felt like laughing ... I’m hesitant to call What We Can Know a masterpiece. But at its best it’s gorgeous and awful, the way the lurid sunsets must have seemed after Krakatau, while also being funny and alive. It’s the best thing McEwan has written in ages. It’s a sophisticated entertainment of a high order.
Impish, goading ... McEwan puckishly draws on his catalog of favored themes ... What we can know is that Mr. McEwan is a novelist of consummate skill, and his latest book a deeply intelligent addition to—perhaps even a crowning of—his oeuvre.
Cerebral ... Engaging and evocative ... This is all brilliantly, and surprisingly, plotted ... There is a daring realignment that boldly shifts the perspective and demonstrates with shocking intensity how little we can ever really grasp about the strange evasions of the heart.
