Lessons Ian Mcewan by Ian Mcewan 9780593535202, 0593535200 instant download after payment.

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. Two thousand 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. 

“The accretion of personal histories is skilful but not obviously interconnected, and you read in anticipation of the big magician’s reveal that will tie the disparate subjects in a neat bow … It turns out that the real revelation... of Lessons is that nothing like this ever comes about. Mr McEwan has created a lost, likable protagonist whose ‘shapeless existence’ militates against the imposition of any grand order of meaning … Which is not to say that Lessons lacks drama, as Mr McEwan builds toward reckonings between Roland and the two influential women in his life. Yet these scenes, while emotionally potent, are essentially inconclusive... Lessons is more formless than previous books and less obviously brilliant. It is also wiser and close to the bone."  -  Sam Sacks , The Wall Street Journal