This is the second book by Ian McEwan that I've started. I finished the first one, but I didn't like it at all. I stopped reading this one after a third of the way (150 pages); it was simply too boring, bloated, rambling, and tedious. I just can't find the right word to express how much this book bored me.
It could have been a good book in principle. But the author simply fails to engage the reader. The writing style is incredibly stiff, the whole approach utterly bland and outdated. The protagonist's life isn't just boring; you want to shake him. The eternal victim—what have others always done to me…
And this is supposed to be his masterpiece?
This will definitely be my last book by Ian McEwan. No matter what anyone else tells me, I won't touch another one. There are so many good books and outstanding writers out there.
Book Description:
"When the world is still counting the cost of the Second World War and the Iron Curtain has closed, eleven-year-old Roland Baines's life is turned upside down. 2,000 miles from his mother's protective love, stranded at an unusual boarding school, his vulnerability attracts piano teacher Miss Miriam Cornell, leaving scars as well as a memory of love that will never fade.
Now, when his wife vanishes, leaving him alone with his tiny son, Roland is forced to confront the reality of his restless existence. As the radiation from Chernobyl spreads across Europe, he begins a search for answers that looks deep into his family history and will last for the rest of his life.
From the Suez Crisis to the Cuban Missile Crisis, the fall of the Berlin Wall to the current pandemic and climate change, Roland sometimes rides with the tide of history, but more often struggles against it. Haunted by lost opportunities, he seeks solace through every possible means - music, literature, friends, sex, politics and, finally, love cut tragically short, then love ultimately redeemed. His journey raises important questions for us all. Can we take full charge of the course of our lives without damage to others? How do global events beyond our control shape our lives and our memories? And what can we really learn from the traumas of the past?
Epic, mesmerising and deeply humane, Lessons is a chronicle for our times - a powerful meditation on history and humanity through the prism of one man's lifetime."
My youngest son read this in 3rd grade and it was his favourite book for ages.
So, when the 1961 Club read somehow went wrong for me (see here, my book was published in 1962), I decided to pick another one from that year. So this is my official book for our 1961 challenge.
I asked my son whether he could remember why he loved this book so much. We are neither American nor big animal lovers nor did we live in the middle of nowhere. He said that it's a long time since he read it (of course, it must have been more than 20 years ago) and that he just remembers it being a nice story.
I guess you have to be an eight to ten year old boy to really love that story. It was well written but I think I was a little too old for that.
But it deserves to be a classic children's book, emphasis on children.
Book Description:
"For fans of Old Yeller and Shiloh, Where the Red Fern Grows is a beloved classic that captures the powerful bond between man and man’s best friend. This special edition includes new material, including a note to readers from Newbery Medal winner and Printz Honor winner Clare Vanderpool, a letter from Wilson Rawls to aspiring writers, original jacket artwork, and more.
Billy has long dreamt of owning not one, but two dogs. So when he’s finally able to save up enough money for two pups to call his own—Old Dan and Little Ann—he’s ecstatic. It’s true that times are tough, but together they’ll roam the hills of the Ozarks.
Soon Billy and his hounds become the finest hunting team in the valley. Stories of their great achievements spread throughout the region, and the combination of Old Dan’s brawn, Little Ann’s brains, and Billy’s sheer will seems unbeatable. But tragedy awaits these determined hunters—now friends—and Billy learns that hope can grow out of despair."
Here are my #ThrowbackThursday reviews from May 2016.
Aboulela, Leila "The Kindness of Enemies" - 2015 Such an interesting book. A lot about history and also a lot about current politics. A woman with a Russian mother and Sudanese father who lives in Scotland and researches the life of a 19th century Muslim leader. What's not to like?
The author has a special way of telling a story, a quiet, almost dreamy way. I think the author is one of the best ones German language writers at the moment.
After having lost his wife, Philipp Perlman hosts a linguistics conference in Italy. While there, he reflects on his life and notices that he has lost all his willpower to go on. We follow him in his endeavour to find a reason for getting out of his predicament.
Mitchell, David "Cloud Atlas" - 2004 An interesting book. Quite different from anything I've read before. It's almost like several short stories in one book, only they do belong to each other.
Oates, Joyce Carol"The Man Without a Shadow" - 2016 This story captivates you from the first page and doesn't release you until the last page has been turned. We get to learn the characters all so well, their thoughts, their hopes, their ambitions, their wishes for the future. Only, that for one of them in this novel there is no real future, it always ends after seven minutes. One of the two main characters suffers from amnesia, the other one is a scientist who studies his brain in particular and thereby hopes to find more insight into the human brain in general.
A heartfelt memoir by a woman who was a good and kind person, who wanted the best for everybody. After her father died, she struggled to keep up his apple farm, more or less on her own. What a tough life, quite hard work, even for a man it would have been hard.
Honeyman, Gail "Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine" - 2017
Eleanor Oliphant is definitely not fine. Saying that she struggles with social skills as they do in the description is quite an understatement. I am sure she has some sort of mental illness or suffers from an event that happened earlier in her life.
I had some trouble getting into the story or into Eleanor. I am very sociable, I always like to have lots of people around me and can talk to anyone who is only lightly inclined to respond. I am sure Eleanor would not appreciate me. And I don't want to intrude, so I guess I would speak a sentence with her and that would be it. I am sorry about that but that's just it. She doesn't really want to talk to anyone, right?
The story itself was quite interesting, though, how she meets this colleague who helps her getting acquainted with this world, the writing wasn't bad, either. But I couldn't warm to this story.
Two quotes that I completely agree with:
"... the front door of the hospital ... a woman in a wheelchair – she’d brought her drip out with her, on wheels, so that she could destroy her health at the same time as taxpayers’ money was being used to try and restore it."
I always get mad when I see people smoking in front of a hospital, especially just right outside a hospital where everyone has to pass, sick people, visitors ... Hospitals and its surroundings should be a smoke-free zone.
and
"Sport is a mystery to me. In primary school, sports day was the one day of the year when the less academically gifted students could triumph, winning prizes for jumping fastest in a sack, or running from Point A to Point B more quickly than their classmates. How they loved to wear those badges on their blazers the next day! As if a silver in the egg-and-spoon race was some sort of compensation for not understanding how to use an apostrophe."
... or get your times-tables right or do anything that will get you somewhere in this life!
"Our book club had a very positive discussion about the book. Most members rated it highly, and one of the strongest shared reactions was how much our view of Eleanor changed as the novel progressed. She may initially seem rigid, socially awkward, overly formal, or emotionally distant, but by the end we felt genuine warmth toward her, were invested in her future, and sincerely wished her well.
A major part of the conversation focused on Eleanor’s neurodivergent traits and how they were portrayed. Given the nature of our group, this aspect of her character was immediately recognizable rather than speculative. Her literal thinking, reliance on routine, difficulty reading unspoken social norms, and unusual communication style all felt authentic to many readers. What interested us more was how these traits intersected with trauma, loneliness, and years of isolation. The novel was praised for allowing that complexity without reducing her to any single label.
Loneliness was another central theme in the discussion. Many readers felt the book captured a particularly modern kind of isolation: someone who is intelligent, employed, capable, and outwardly functioning, yet profoundly disconnected from other people. Eleanor is not excluded from society in any obvious sense, but instead seems to exist beside it, unable to fully participate. This subtle portrayal of loneliness resonated strongly with the group.
We also talked extensively about trauma, addiction, and coping mechanisms. Eleanor’s drinking was generally seen not as recklessness, but as a form of self-medication and emotional numbing. Her routines, detachment, and narrow life structure felt less like random dysfunction and more like survival strategies that had become fixed over time. Several members noted how realistically the novel shows pain becoming embedded in everyday habits.
Spoiler:
The revelation of the dead mother led to one of the most engaged parts of the conversation. Readers saw this as a powerful representation of how abuse can continue internally long after the abuser is gone. The mother’s voice remains active through criticism, shame, and control, shaping Eleanor’s life even in death. Many felt this was one of the novel’s strongest psychological insights.
* * *
Relationships were another important topic. We appreciated that the story avoids a simplistic romantic rescue arc. Raymond was especially valued because his everyday kindness, patience, and consistency give Eleanor a model of safe human connection. Rather than dramatically 'saving' her, he helps create the conditions in which she can slowly begin to emerge from isolation and reconnect with life. Many readers felt this understated portrayal of friendship was one of the book’s greatest strengths. (I do agree there.)
Language and translation also became a particularly interesting part of the discussion. Some members read the novel in English, some in Finnish, and one in Russian, which allowed for direct comparison. Eleanor’s character is strongly shaped through voice: her formal diction, blunt literalism, unusual phrasing, and emotional reserve. We discussed how each translation inevitably influences how readers perceive her. The portrayal of the mother was especially interesting here, since tone, cruelty, manipulation, and emotional pressure can shift subtly depending on language.
We also discussed the novel’s balance of humour and pain. Eleanor’s voice often creates comedy through precision, bluntness, and social mismatch, yet beneath that humour lies real emotional suffering. Many readers felt the book handled this contrast skilfully, allowing warmth and sadness to coexist without either feeling forced.
Overall, the group agreed that Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is an intelligent, humane, and emotionally perceptive novel. It succeeds not only as a story of trauma and recovery, but as a reminder that people who seem merely difficult, odd, or distant are often carrying far more complexity than others realise. The fact that Eleanor ended as someone we genuinely cared about was, for many of us, the clearest sign of the book’s success."
Book Description:
"Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy.
But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become the kinds of friends who rescue one another from the lives of isolation they have each been living. And it is Raymond’s big heart that will ultimately help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one.
Soon to be a major motion picture produced by Reese Witherspoon, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is the smart, warm, and uplifting story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes. . ."
Top Five Tuesday was originally created by Shanah @ Bionic Book Worm, but is now hosted by Meeghan @ Meeghan Reads. To participate, link your post back to Meeghan’s blog or leave a comment on her weekly post. I found this on Davida's Page @ The Chocolate Lady.
Since I am just as fond of them as they are, I jump at the chance to share my lists with them! Have a look at their page, there are lots of other bloggers who share their lists here.
This week's topic is Authors. A while ago, I made a list of many of my favourite authors (see here) and could easily choose ten of them. But I thought it would be more fun to present some German authors. I think everyone knows that I love authors like Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Gรผnter Grass, Thomas Mann, but I thought I'd introduce you to some contemporary German authors that are all worth reading. Not all of their books have been translated but there is at least one from all of them.
Unfortunately, Jana seems to have disappeared and has not given us any new subjects. So, I've decided to come up with the last books I read that started with the letters I need.
