In What We Can Know, massive swathes of the UK are underwater
Westend61/Getty Photographs
What We Can Know
Ian McEwan (Jonathan Cape (UK); Knopf (US))
The most recent novel by Ian McEwan, What We Can Know, is a rare piece of labor that defies neat categorisation.
The story is essentially narrated by a person named Tom Metcalfe, a tutorial on the College of the South Downs, UK, within the yr 2119. The seas have risen dramatically, and solely the highlands of the UK stay above water. For Tom to journey to, say, the Cotswold Islands, he should rent a ship and a captain. Marlborough is now a port, and a journey to as far north as what was once the Lake District is out of the query, because of pirates.
The world is remodeled; life is frugal. There are far fewer folks, although they’re crowded collectively on scraps of remaining land. The profligacy of the “Derangement”, because the lengthy interval earlier than the seas rose is now known as, has vanished.
Nonetheless, this future world is just one strand of the e book. Tom is a historian, and what he’s significantly concerned with, because it occurs, is one thing very particular: a cocktail party given in 2014, lengthy earlier than local weather change hit the UK laborious. He’s concerned with all of the individuals who attended that soirée, and the allegedly nice poem that the host, a poet known as Francis Blundy, learn to his company that night.
Therefore, the second strand of this novel is a deep dive into that middle-class, literary-set feast – the kind of occasion you possibly can nicely think about McEwan attending in actual life. Which may sound like fairly a stretch, however it made rising sense to me because the e book went on.
“
Nobody outdoors the feast ever heard the poem, and no laborious copy was ever circulated
“
Tom’s causes for digging ever deeper into that dinner are manifold. Within the story, the poem learn out that evening went on to be held up as a terrific work that railed in opposition to local weather change, and was stated to have been suppressed by large oil. But nobody outdoors the occasion ever heard it, and no laborious copy was ever circulated. Was the poem about local weather change or one thing else solely? It’s a literary thriller.
What’s extra, Tom has discovered that for his college students to turn out to be within the artwork of the previous, they need to first settle for the artists of the previous as actual folks. The one method to obtain that, he tells us, is to supply element concerning the lifeless. So the lives of Blundy, his spouse Vivien and their set matter deeply to him.
There may be additionally a private facet to Tom’s rising obsession with the Blundys. After years of research, he believes he has constructed up a portrait in his thoughts’s eyes of all the things that occurred that fateful evening, and he feels he now is aware of Vivien, specifically, very nicely certainly. He could even be in love along with her.
Then Tom finds a clue that may lead him to the poem.
This novel gained’t be for everybody, however then, what novel is? I ended up completely loving it. It’s sensationally nicely written, as you’d count on from McEwan, and it’s a very intelligent and thought-provoking e book certainly, with many surprises contained inside it. I failed to identify, or at the very least piece collectively, all the clues laid out for me, so I used to be amazed by each twist.
I discovered What We Can Know‘s depiction of our drowned future moderately twinkling and magical: it had a little bit of Swallows and Amazons, crossed with Hobbiton, to it. I additionally discovered the detailed and critical portrait of Vivien and the lads in her life to be gripping.
The novel stayed with me for a number of days after I completed it. It makes you concentrate on local weather change and the denial thereof, love and deceit, how correct histories can ever be, whether or not we will ever know one other particular person’s coronary heart… amongst many different issues! I totally suggest it.
Emily additionally recommends…
Briefly Very Stunning
Roz Dineen (Bloomsbury (UK); The Overlook Press (US))
This novel, first revealed final yr, paints a really totally different image of the UK after extreme local weather change. Dineen imagines a sizzling future, moderately than a drowned one. However, like What We Can Know, the novel additionally offers with highly effective themes of intimacy, reminiscence and loss.
Emily H. Wilson is a former editor of New Scientist and the creator of the Sumerians trilogy, set in historical Mesopotamia. The last novel within the collection, Ninshubar, is out now. You will discover her at emilyhwilson.com, or observe her on X @emilyhwilson and Instagram @emilyhwilson1
Take your science fiction writing into a brand new dimension throughout this weekend dedicated to constructing new worlds and new artistic endeavors Matters:
The artwork and science of writing science fiction
