What We Can Know - Ian McEwan

 What We Can Know - Ian McEwan

Pub. Date: Sept. 23, 2025

She read

In the next century, due to climate and nuclear disasters, Britain is a series of archipelagos. Humanities academic Tom Metcalfe is obsessed with finding a lost poem from 2014, a supposed masterpiece. When he finds a clue as to the possible location of the only copy that was ever made, he sets off to locate it. In the second part of the book, the reader learns the true events surrounding the poem.

I don’t typically choose futuristic or dystopian novels. But I like Ian McEwan’s writing, and when I read the synopsis about the apocalyptic future and with what is going on right now in the world, it didn’t seem so science fiction to me.

There is such depth to this story.  There were many passages that I saved (I read ebooks, so I screen shoot) to go back to revisit and savor. There is a wealth of thought-provoking ideas. Most germane for me are the astute and unsettling observations of the present political situation and climate denial and the dystopian consequences it could bring. The novel also explores themes of legacy, the persistence of myths (or shadows of truth), guilt, relationships, and the encroachment of technology on our privacy.

The novel poses an important question: How much do we truly know about the past? Despite the enduring legacy of what lives on in the digital realm, what can we know?

The tempo shifts in the second part of the book.  Some readers will prefer the first section, others the second. 

Thanks to #NetGalley and @aaknopf for the  DRC.

*****