But Roland is so passive that one gets the sense he’d be exactly the same guy in any other century, only with a different haircut. And maybe some readers do, in fact, require that reminder. These all serve as reminders that history is occurring. Upon Roland he cropdusts excessive quantities of names and dates: Chernobyl, Hitler, Nasser, Khrushchev, the Cuban missile crisis, Northern Ireland, the Balkans, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, John Major, the Freedom of Information Act, 9/11, Enron, Karl Rove, Gordon Brown, Nigel Farage, Covid.
McEwan’s use of global events in his fiction tends to be judicious and revealing. As a German she stands above Günter Grass she is “almost as big as Mann.” Once published, Alissa is compared to Nabokov and Tolstoy. The poor man has been cuckolded by … literature. If the novel were bad, Roland might have enjoyed the meager pleasure of contempt. Motherhood, she tells her husband, “would’ve sunk me.” (The “would’ve” is indicative of Alissa’s cleverness by a trick of grammar her desertion is rendered both complete and inevitable.) Years later, Roland stumbles upon his estranged wife in a cafe and learns that she has had a novel accepted for publication. He cares for the baby, eats, sleeps, shops and cleans. I’ve been living the wrong life.” She leaves her house keys on the bed. The disappearance is voluntary a note on Alissa’s pillow instructs Roland not to look for her: “I’m OK. Roland has married a German woman, Alissa, who vanishes shortly after the birth of their infant son. Interspersed with the Miriam scenes are sections that take place throughout Roland’s future, starting in 1986. It’s not a proposal but a command: Roland is to show up at the registry office, pen in hand, and do her bidding. At dinner one night, she slides an envelope across the table containing marriage paperwork. She locks the boy’s clothing and money in a shed, keeping him hostage. Intercourse with Roland is the queasiest but not the only expression of Miriam’s monstrosity. He doesn’t make that journey until a bit later, when he is 14 and Miriam 25. Then she plants a kiss on his mouth, and invites him - orders him - to visit her at home during the next school holiday. His piano instructor is the rosewater-scented Miss Miriam Cornell, a pretty sadist who pinches Roland’s thigh when he biffs a section of Bach. Roland is 11 years old and it is time he received a proper education: Latin, French, cricket, rugby, piano.
Roland’s father is part of the British Army contingent in North Africa his mother works at a Y.M.C.A. Roland Baines and his parents arrive in London from Libya in the late summer of 1959. His characters are occasionally lecherous, often bitter and always secularly human. He specializes in the mental life of one particular, culturally endemic type: the contemporary middle-class British male.
Nobody is better at writing about entropy, indignity and ejaculation - among other topics - than Ian McEwan.
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