WHAT WE CAN KNOW by Ian McEwan

5 stars

This may be one of Ian McEwan’s most brilliant novels!

It’s set nearly 100 years into the future in 2120 when climate change along with nuclear detonations have caused tsunamis that flooded most urban cities and left behind a world of decentralized small island territories in their wake. People have returned to more simple way of life, pre-technology with medieval overlays.

In the islands that remain of the UK, two literature professors hunt for a famous lost poem that been eulogized about but never found. Thomas McEwan (sharing the irony of the author’s last name!) goes from one island mountain top library to the next, poring over all the manuscripts, emails, letters diaries and digital records from everyone who attended a dinner at which the long poem was read in 2014. The poet had made only one copy of the poem, dedicated to his wife for her birthday, and it has never reappeared. But myths about its content consumed the professors’ generation as having been the most epic poem of all time. The Nigerians (another post-apocalyptic irony) have resurrected the internet which provides another research tool. In the meantime, a younger generation of students could care less about the poem or for that matter any written language and literature is becoming a dying art.

How the poem came to disappear becomes the heart of a deep mystery, but larger philosophical themes really make this novel soar. The true substance of the novel focuses on what makes great poetry or literature, and what it’s loss from the future will mean. Concurrent with this is an intense focus on the relationships of all the main characters: about the meaning of their lives, fidelity, guilt, and the privacy of each’s story in the context of history.

A must-read book of the year!

Thanks to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage and Anchor and NetGalley for an advanced reader’s copy.

Stacy DeBroff

Stacy DeBroff, founder and CEO of Mom Central.com and social and digital consultancy, Influence Central, is a social media strategist, attorney, and best-selling parenting author. A sought-after expert for national media, she trend-spots regularly with national brands and speaks frequently to national and international audiences on a wide range of subjects, including influencer marketing, social media, entrepreneurship, and consumer trends. A passionate cook, gardener, reader, and tennis player, she adores this new chapter of post-college-age parenting.