Book: WHAT WE CAN KNOW
Author: Ian McEwan
Published by: Jonathan Cape
Price: Rs 899
Ian McEwan’s novel explores two key ideas: climate change and the incapability of human beings to truly know anyone, including people they might feel closest to. The book is set in the year, 2119, when climate change and nuclear wars have ravaged the world. Large parts of the world are now under water and Britain has turned into an archipelago while Nigeria is the centre of power. Travel is difficult, potentially hazardous and life-threatening. The world population has reduced to a great extent and global flora and fauna have shrunk as well.
In this world, we meet Thomas Metcalfe, a scholar at the University of the South Downs, who has become obsessed with a poem, “A Corona for Vivien”. This poem was written by Francis Blundy (a poet considered second only to Seamus Heaney) and has since been lost, thus gaining a mythical status. Metcalfe digs deeper into the archives of Francis’s wife, Vivien, to whom “A Corona…” was dedicated and who owned its sole copy. Since the poem was read aloud only once, at Vivien’s birthday party, Metcalfe gives his readers a detailed picture of the entire party, including details of the guests, their dinner, their states of mind, and their reception of the poem using old journal entries and other sources.
To Metcalfe, the past and its people are much more real than the present. Yet, as he digs deeper into his obsession with finding the poem, his painstaking research peels back the layers of time and gradually builds to a finale, which manages to take him as well as the reader by surprise.
The themes of obsession, memory and its fallibility, complicated relationships, and guilt feature predominantly in the novel. Then there’s also the idea of how something ordinary can be turned into the extraordinary, even granted a mythical status in its absence, based merely on hearsay. Metcalfe’s obsessions with his chosen period of study and, in particular, with the poem echo those of scholars with their fields of study.
The dual timelines make for an uneven reading experience though, both in terms of writing and pace. The descriptions of the past and the people who are now long dead feel more real, alive and engaging than Metcalfe’s present life and concerns, which include his love life with his colleague, Rose, and his professional challenges. Interestingly, while a lot may have changed in 2119, a few things remain constant: the humanities still come second to science in importance, and it’s still difficult to arouse the students’ interest in what they are studying. It is the central mystery of the lost poem which keeps the reader interested, especially in the sections that seem to flounder and lose pace. However, once the reader reaches the second part, chances are that they will not be able to stop reading before reaching the end.
While there is a secret at the heart of What We can Know — Metcalfe’s quest to unravel that secret gives strength to the work — the novel is equally a study of the dissembling, the dissatisfaction, and the discord in relationships that are easier to be papered over than be resolved. McEwan called this book “Science fiction without the science”. It certainly has a dystopian ring to it, and this stems from not just the war-ravaged, climate-crisis ridden future but also from the idea that ultimately, isolation might be the only truth which defines the human condition.