I was so pleased to have an opportunity to read a pre-publication copy of Ian McEwan’s new novel; however, my feelings upon reading it were mixed. The novel is told in two parts. The first takes place in 2130 in an England, which has suffered from great flooding and destruction caused by climate change, nuclear war and nuclear bombs exploding in the ocean. A great deal of England now consists only of a series of islands, some of which are uninhabited. Life, of course, is very different, although humanity and some species have survived. The main character in the first (dystopian) part of the novel is an academic (Michael) whose sole interest is the poet, Frances Bundy, who wrote during the 2010 – 2030 period. Michael is particularly interested in a complex poem written by Brundy for his wife, Vivien on her birthday. Michael has discovered that Bundy read the poem at a birthday dinner party, and then the poem disappeared. Michael is determined to find the poem, and he does extensive research on Bundy, his family and his friends, as well as many aspects of the 2010 – 2030 period. McEwan’s description of the world in 2130 are very interesting. However, I could not become sympathetic with the lengthy descriptions of academic life in 2130 or Michael’s intense focus on poetry. Perhaps this was because I am not a student of poetry, but the focus on poetry itself and academics did not draw me in.
The second half of the novel is narrated by Vivien and is set in the 2020 era. In this part the “real story” of Vivien’s life, her interaction with the other characters (including her husband) and the poem are revealed. For me, this part was very well done. I was fully drawn in to Vivien, and I enjoyed the fact that she was not a wholly likeable person. The plot moved more rapidly and a number of topics, including the devastation of Alzheimer’s on patient and carer were discussed. Guilt (or lack thereof) was also an important topic.
Of course the writing was wonderful. McEwan’s prose is simple and beautiful. I just wish the focus on the poem had been more appealing to me.

A beautifully written book about history and how much we truly know about the past. A very beautifully written book that will make you consider the world as it is.

Professor Thomas Metcalfe live in apocalyptic Britain in 2119. He is obsessed with finding the handwritten copy of the poem “ A Corona for Vivien” that was written in 2014 by the then-renowned poet Francis Blunder wrote for his wife and recited at a dinner party. This handwritten poem has been missing for decades, but Thomas remains fixated on finding it, so much so that he neglects his wife as well as his student’s needs. I really wanted to like this book, but it was very difficult for me to get into, especially for the first half of the book. Although it did pick up for me in the second half (which is the memoir that Vivien left behind) and kept me somewhat entertained, I found the book overall to be pretty boring, and it looks as though I am an outlier in this respect. I did, however, definitely enjoy McEwan’s beautiful writing style. All is all, this was a decent but disappointing read for me.

I received a free advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. My thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley.

Oops. This was not for me.

The book is split into two halves. The first half follows a scholar who is obsessing over a poem, the poet, and the woman it's written about. Mostly about the woman. The second part is from the point of view of said woman.

None of the characters are likeable. Considering the "historical" portion is supposed to take place about this time and the scholarly part is about 100 years in a hypothetical future, it all reads like classic literature from the 1800s or maybe very early 1900s. McEwan is without a doubt a gifted writer and his writing is beautiful, but the plot was dull. I wasn't invested in any of it.

The only thing I found mildly interesting was how McEwan seemed to be providing commentary on historical scholarship and how historians have to work with the evidence left to them in order to create narratives. He delves into how that can quickly turn into creating fictions or assumptions. And he then brings us into the second part of the book by showing just how wrong all of that can be.

Oh, yeah, and also there was a twist in there. It did surprise me.

I'm sure that this will hit for many readers. I am just not the right audience for this one.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage and Anchor Publishing for the free ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

What We Can Know follows Thomas Metcalfe, a scholar from 2219 (when the climate has changed dramatically) who studies the poetry of Francis Blundy, whose last big work was lost in 2014. The work, a poem called "A Corona for Vivien", was a birthday "present" he wrote and presented for his wife Vivien. (Does anyone want a poem someone reads at them during their birthday party for a present?) Blundy was a climate change denier who didn't do a single chore because he was a "genius", so his wife did everything.

I'm not a big fan of poetry in the best of times and the entire plot didn't sound engaging to me even without Blundy being a raging piece of garbage, but I knew from previous books Ian McEwan is a gifted author so I decided to read this. I'm glad I gave it a chance.

Blundy is an arrogant man who disgusted me right from the beginning, but thankfully the true focus of the book is on Tom, his search for the poem, on Vivien, and what might've happened to the poem. The first half or so of the book is very slow-sometimes there are pieces when Tom gets so into the weeds with scholarly portions that it felt like the book came to an absolute standstill. However, the second half picked up and learning more about the other people in Vivien's life made the last half of the book fly by. I was particularly touched by the quote from Richard Holmes's Footsteps-I'm paraphrasing but for most of the book Tom feels about Vivien the way the character in the book feels about Richard Louis Stevenson-he will never be able to exist during her time and know her as closely as he'd like. There's something tragic about that...I can't say more without spoiling anything but wow, the book really sucked me in toward the end and it's the reason I bumped up a 3 star rating to a 4 star rating.

Oh this one is so beautiful and brilliant! Had me asking questions all throughout and still leaves me pondering how we think about the past. I haven’t read McEwan’s full catalogue, but this book has convinced me I must dive deeper into his other works. Nothing but awe here after this read. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Thank you to the publisher, Alfred A. Knopf Publisher, and the author, Ian McEwan, for the privilege to read this advanced copy through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own. I was excited to read this book, "What We Can Know," by the author of "Atonement."

Part One of the book seemed to drag for me. I struggled to stick with reading it. As I was reading the first part, I thought I'd give the story two stars. There was much focus on a poet and his poetry. I'm an avid reader but poetry is not a genre I enjoy. Then Part Two comes. Wow! I couldn't put the book down! The background to the "future" part of the story and details on the characters comes out in Part Two. It almost felt like a different writing style. I wish the first part had gripped me like the second part. It would have been a 5-star book. I'll have to compromise with a 3.5 rating.

The book begins with Tom and Rose in the future, summer of 2120, and who are "studying" the story of Francis and Vivien Blundy with Francis's poem, "Corona for Vivien." Time goes between the future and "current" times. There's a famous dinner in 2014 with eight guests where everyone loved the "Corona" poem is read by Francis to his wife, Vivien. Part One revolves around this poem, which is the heart of the story. The poem that people in the future are trying to locate. A century after the infamous dinner the "Corona" poem is still being discussed. Part One presents the future looking at the cultural and societal problems of 2014, such as quantum computing, climate change, AI. In my opinion, it's too much. The poem read described "the natural world beautifully... it certainly could be seen as a 'climate-change' poem." When the book went down these tangents, I was bored.

Fortunately, I stuck with it and loved Part Two. The reader learns the intent of the poem. How the poem could be misconstrued while loved and hated. There are twists that I didn't see coming.

If you are a reader who can push through a challenge, the book is worth reading. If you can make it to Part Two, you'll enjoy it.

"A literary work, like a small child, may take a long time to achieve a fully independent life. Or it might have no life at all."

As a lover of history and higher education, it was amusing to follow future literary scholar Tom Metcalfe's infatuation with our near present day. Even still, I'm chuckling imagining a brilliant academic of the future getting into arguments with cohorts about what sides a mid 2000's woman named Vivian made with roast quail on one fateful evening dubbed The Night of the Immortal Dinner.

The text is quite dense. The characters, deliciously flawed. Twisting and escalating under the magnifying glass of obsessive academia, the mystery surrounding fictional poet Francis Blundy and his finest missing work comes to a satisfying conclusion when, in Part Two— through the acquisition of private journals belonging to his wife, we reach a dark clarity along with Tom.

What We Can Know is a 'corona' for the neurotic scholar and a hell of a ride on the Unreliable Narrator Express.

I am grateful to have received an ARC through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book was hard to get into I tried really hard to like this book, but I couldn't finish this book. I picked it up twice and put it down both times.

A formidable imaginative achievement. The story is told in two parts. In the first, set in 2119, a scholar writing over a century after the events he describes tries to capture the essence of a missing poem from the responses of the circle of friends at a dinner in which it was read. In the second, set in 2014, the dedicatee and sole possessor of the poem gives her version of what happened and of what the poem is about. I use "her version" advisedly, rather than simply "what happened and what the poem is about". Such is the intelligence of McEwan's creative genius that the contrast really must be made.

As one can expect, the two versions - though obviously about the same event and object - radically vary in their accounts. Nevertheless, the author provides a valuable clue in the epigraph of his book from the biographer Richard Holmes:

It concerns the kind of human truth, poised between fact and fiction, which a biographer can make as he tells the story of another’s life, and thereby make it both his own (like a friendship) and the public’s (like a betrayal). It asks what we can know, and what we can believe, and finally what we can love.

One must then face the question: which version is to be preferred?

I don't love this as much as Atonement or even Sweet Tooth, but esteem it better than On Chesil Beach or Amsterdam. However, such is the cleverness of McEwan's (telling of the) story that one is forced to turn back to the first page upon finishing it and read the whole thing again - which I plan to do soon. My opinion might then shift.

ARC provided by Netgalley and the publisher.

Ian McEwan’s What We Can Know is a cerebral, beautifully written meditation on memory, history, and the limits of understanding. Set in a post-climate disaster England in 2119, the novel follows historian Thomas Metcalfe as he obsessively reconstructs the story of a long-lost poem, “A Corona for Vivien,” using emails, texts, and journals from a century prior. The first part, dense and meticulous, immerses the reader in Thomas’s intellectual pursuit and the ethical questions of interpreting the past.

The second part flips the narrative, revealing Vivien’s firsthand perspective and dramatically reframing everything Thomas thought he knew. The contrast between the future scholar’s assumptions and the lived reality of the past is striking and thought-provoking.

McEwan’s prose is precise and immersive, though the first half’s pacing can feel slow, and some characters are emotionally distant. Still, the novel’s layered exploration of knowledge, obsession, and human connection makes it a rewarding read for thoughtful literary fiction fans.

I was excited to see a new book by Ian McEwan as I've been a fan since Black Dogs [1992]. That said, my admiration waxes and wanes. AND, if I had read the blurb more carefully [distracted by the thought of another McEwan book], I might have skipped as I do not like dystopian reads and this takes place in 2119 [and the 21st century]. I do like a dual timeline and thankfully this spent less time in the not so distant future. where climate change and the global political order have run amok.

The setting: 2119, when "Tom Metcalfe, an academic at the University of the South Downs, part of Britain’s remaining island archipelagos, pores over the archives of that distant era, captivated by the freedoms and possibilities of human life at its zenith. When he stumbles across a clue that may lead to the lost poem [a corona, written in 2014], a story is revealed of entangled loves and a crime that destroy his assumptions about people he thought he knew intimately well."

The main characters, Francis and Vivien Blundy--but also her former husband, Percy, Francis' ex-wife, Jane, and a cast of other characters--friends and relatives, academics, tradesmen and more, enter the narrative.

I found the distant future a tedious read; the story of Francis and Vivien et al, and their various affairs, more readable--and then skip to 2020 when the narrative thankfully speeds up.

What do we really know about the past? Who tells the truth and/or embellishes the present? Who holds secrets?

BUT... Often dense, I found my self turning the pages and hoping for more engagement. No humor.

Phrase I did like: "impoverished emotional range"

So, giving it a 3.5 for originalitiy, but not rounding up.

A novel of ideas with a mystery at its core, Ian McEwan’s 18th novel centers around, as the title suggests, just how much we can truly ever know–of the past, of others, and of ourselves.

Thomas Metcalfe is a scholar of the humanities in 2119, obsessed with a poet, Francis Blundy, who was particularly active and successful in the late 20th and early 21st century. Blundy is particularly famous for a poem, ‘A Corona for Vivien,’ that was delivered orally one night to a small dinner party but never made it into publication, the only copy gifted to Vivien being lost to time.

At the dinner party celebrating Francis’s wife’s birthday, the poem’s titular Vivien, were his sister, Jane, her husband and Francis’s editor, Harry, and some other friends of the family. Through recorded history in the form of emails, text messages, and journals, preserved by the Nigerian internet in a post-climate catastrophe environment, Thomas has pieced together all collective knowledge and thought about the poem without ever having read the poem himself.

Though the humanities are a dying field of study in the 22nd century, losing out to science and technology while the world recovers from 100 years of environmental change and global conflict, Thomas and his academic partner and lover, Rose, are determined to continue the love and appreciation of the arts in their students’ minds.

Thomas’s relentless search for anything related to the corona (a 15 sonnet sequence in which the final line of each sonnet is the line that begins the subsequent) pushes him further and further into the past, into the lives of the members of the dinner part, particularly Vivien’s, unearthing long forgotten secrets and perhaps the answer to the central mystery of what happened to the poem and what it contained.

You are in great hands with McEwan. From the start I felt so assured that he knew exactly where this story was going, when to dispense what information, and how it all tied to the themes of memory, history, and the narratives that drive our collective understanding of the past. There is such a strong tension in the story, especially within the narrator Thomas, between the present and past, as someone who spends nearly all of his time dreaming of a world lost and fearing that it will soon be forgotten. If we do not preserve the past, we may be doomed to repeat it, or at least forget the lessons learned that can help us avoid future disaster. But is spending too much time in the past neglectful of actions that can be taken in the very real, immediate present? And how can we really know that what we think we know of the past is truly what happened?

The narrative twists and turns in exciting and interesting ways: ways I will not spoil here because it is so fun to discover on one’s own. I was constantly surprised, propelled forward by a need to know and fearful that I might never find out or trust what I discovered. In ways this reminded me a bit of Trust by Hernan Diaz, in fact. I think readers who enjoyed that will find a lot to enjoy here as well, with a speculative/cli-fi setting layered on top.

Literary fiction with a Cli-Fi backdrop that imagines the world of history and literature after our technology and culture are transformed by a changing planet - from the author of Atonement.

“The evening may have once been a private affair, but it no longer was. The issue was not a lost birthday poem read after dinner, it was what the poem by its non- existence had become: a repository of dreams, of tortured nostalgia, futile retrospective anger and a focus of unhinged reverence…”

All in all, the imagined/predicted conditions of the planet were more fascinating to me than the long and dragging story. The plot moves slowly, could definitely cut out 100 pages. With gems sprinkled throughout about how and why the planet has transformed ecologically, and the technical and geopolitical fallout.

“We showed colourful animations, simple to understand. Twentieth and twenty- first centuries, sea- level rise two millimetres a year, mostly driven by anthropogenic (we explained the term) warming. Warmer water expands, adding to the rise. Freshwater lakes drained by human overuse, the water recycled as rain and snow back into the oceans – more rise. Melting ice, albedo effect explained – more warmth, more rise. But more significant, the nuclear politics of the mid- twenty- first century and the fatal concept of limited nuclear war, then a poorly engineered Russian intercontinental missile aimed at the southern United States exploding in the mid- Atlantic ocean, catastrophic tsunamis devastating Europe, West Africa and coastal North America, the suspicion that the mighty explosion was planned, the political pressure for revenge, further catastrophe before a panicked peace was arranged.”

The impact of this global reorganization is that this era we are currently living in of mass proliferation of content, has ended and is somewhat of a curiosity to historians of the future:

“…our biographers, historians and critics, whose subjects were active from about 2000 onwards, are heirs to more than a century of what the Blundy era airily called ‘the cloud’, ever expanding like a giant summer cumulus, though, of course, it simply consisted of data- storage machines. We have inherited almost two centuries of still photography and film. Hundreds of Francis Blundy lectures, interviews and readings were recorded and remain available by way of the Nigerian internet. All his newspaper and magazine reviews and profiles exist in digital form. In 2004, when the Blundy phones became cameras, pictures of the Barn, its interior and the surrounding countryside proliferated.”

Thanks to NetGalley for an opportunity to read this advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

** Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing a digital ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review **
McEwan delivers a compelling mix of emotional intimacy and intellectual intrigue in this latest work. The story unfolds with precision, drawing you in with layered characters and moral complexity. His prose is as elegant as ever, with moments that stop you in your tracks. The novel balances personal stakes with broader philosophical questions, keeping the tension alive without losing its heart. I appreciated how it made me think while also making me feel. It’s a thought-provoking and moving read that lingers long after the final page.

This book felt very long and needlessly verbose - I didn’t connect to any of the characters or really anything that was going on. I skimmed through and felt rather unsatisfied. Disappointing.

**Features:**

- Uncovering the secrets of a long lost poem and the people who were the only ones to have seen/heard it
- Dual timelines with one in a far flung dystopian future
- Examines the limits of what we can truly know when studying the past
- Morally ambiguous characters

**Synopsis:**

Academic researcher Tom Metcalfe’s holy grail is a poem that has been lost to time. The only copy of this corona written in 2014 by renowned poet Francis Blundy for his wife Vivien was recited and presented to her on her birthday. Nobody has seen or heard the poem since though even the author himself speculates that it's his master work. Now in the year 2119, Metcalfe is left to dig through the lives of Francis, Vivien, and their friends’ lives in search for answers. With access to the vast digital presence these individuals left behind, written journals, and archives of their work, Metcalfe feels like he knows these individuals of the distant past intimately. But when he discovers a new clue about where the poem might actually be, everything he thought he knew is turned on its head.

**Thoughts:**

Meandering and thought provoking, this book explores perception vs. reality as we get to know problematic characters both present(ish) and future. By 2119, the world has experienced catastrophic conflict and climate change that has vastly changed the landscape and what remains of society. It is from this world that Tom forms his perceptions of and attachment to the Blundies and their friends as he builds their narrative through his research. Having this future timeline provided an interesting examination of what it would be like to view our present through an historical lens and the falsehoods that can still arise even when considering a good portion of our lives and experiences have been recorded through various digital means. That being said, it felt to me like the speculative/dystopian elements served to highlight the themes being explored rather than being a true driving force of the story.

Though I thought the book as a whole was stellar, I admittedly had a lot of trouble getting into it. The book opens from Tom’s perspective and we are learning about all of the characters through his dry, academic reporting. It makes perfect sense for the character voice and how we are ‘constructing’ the events surrounding the missing poem. However, it also almost put me to sleep. Once all of the characters from the past actually arrive on the scene and are interacting, things get a lot more interesting. The book changes perspective in the second half to one much closer to the 2014 event and the shift really elevates the story as a whole. It is definitely worth pushing through the first 4-5 chapters.

As a warning, I didn’t find any of the characters very likeable and I don’t really think I was supposed to. This isn’t really a deal breaker for me, but I know it can be for others. However, their complicated and messy lives created space to examine more themes and questions than I am able to list. I could definitely see this being a great book club read for the right group.

I started this book anticipating McEwan's traditionally sparse fiction. However, this novel is set 100 years in the dystopian future and is unusually verbose. The academic protagonist (one of two) is on a hunt for a much lauded 100-year-old poem that has never been seen or read since its first reading at the poet's wife's birthday. He must manage this in a world in which all is not lost, but significantly altered. The second protagonist largely sets the record straight regarding the prior uncertainties, but there were no surprises for this reader. I found the writing style disappointing and unnecessarily lengthy.

4.5 stars

"A poem has served history well by remaining a blank sheet."

In 2014, a remarkable poem was read aloud but never heard again. Only one copy existed. For generations, people speculated about its profound message, yet it has ever been discovered.

In the year 2119, the lowlands of the United Kingdom have been submerged by rising seas — due to both climate change and as a result of a brief nuclear conflict. Some of those who survive are haunted by the richness of the world that has been lost beneath the waves.

"Sustained historical research is a dance with strangers I have come to love."

Tom Metcalfe, an academic at the University of the South Downs, a part of Britain’s remaining island archipelagos, delves into the archives of that distant era, captivated by the freedoms and possibilities of human life at its peak. Tom, like so many historians who've come before him, struggles to balance his vision of the past and reconciling how much he may be romanticizing it. His own focus of study are the years 1990 through 2030, and his fixation is on the missing poem, a corona — a sequence of sonnets, typically addressed to one person, and following a single theme or idea.

"I used to imagine that the past existed somewhere other than in people's heads. All that happiness and sorrow, those jokes, battles, holidays and people could not simply disappear. Surely, the past lingered in a hidden dimension by its place of origin."

His assumptions about the people he believed he knew intimately shatter only when he is delivered a clue that may lead to the lost poem.

McEwan is hit and miss for me — but this was definitely a hit.

The writing is dense — word-level dense, but in a way that’s interesting. Set in 2119 and beyond, does McEwan imagine our language coagulates into a thicker syntax? Because this is a creamy soup, rather than the watery broth base we’re used to nowadays, and I quite like this idea. Rather than language becoming truncated and torn up by social media and texting, in the devastated future it congeals and complicates itself beautifully.

The second part is the actual voice of the people from the past. Initially, I was almost irritated to be thrust into it. However, once it revealed its purpose of transforming everyone into a real person, rather than a romanticized vision of the past, the tension — wholly unexpected at that point — began to gradually increase.

McEwan's construction of the future and deconstruction of the past are only small components of this incredible novel — its density exists in a swirling eddy of ideas and examinations of how we look at the past, live in the present, and ignore the future.

This is a DNF at around the 30% mark. Clearly, I am missing something. The writing is dense and slow and the characters and their lives just didn’t intrigue me enough to keep reading.