🌅As I grow older, I often wonder about my past, what my family will remember of me, and what I will remember of events in my life. Even today, I realize that many of those memories are just interpretations—versions that have been passed down, distorted, and reimagined over time. Ian McEwan’s What We Can Know explores that question through a dual-timeline literary mystery built around a dystopian future.

In 2119, Britain has been reduced to scattered archipelagos after climate collapse and nuclear fallout. Thomas Metcalfe, a humanities professor in a fading academic world, becomes obsessed with locating a lost poem, “A Corona for Vivian,” written by 21st-century poet Francis Blundy. The search draws him into the romanticized past—one that may not be as noble as he imagines. In the 2014 timeline, Vivian Blundy’s journal offers a counterpoint, slowly exposing personal truths and unraveling the myth of her marriage to Francis.

The novel is rich in themes: legacy, truth, privacy, the fragility of memory, and the ethics of historical preservation. As is typical with his stories, McEwan’s writing is subtle and lyrical, full of quiet revelations. The contrast between the timelines adds emotional weight, especially as Vivian’s voice sharpens the story’s moral ambiguity. I found the characters hard to root for, and Vivian’s experience with cognitive decline and emotional trauma dragged slightly in pacing. Still, it deepens the emotional core of the story.

What We Can Know isn’t a page-turner in the traditional sense—it’s a slow, piercing examination of how we remember, what we choose to forget, and whether we can ever truly know the past. I appreciate Knopf and NetGalley for the opportunity to review the story in exchange for my honest review. 3.5 stars that I rounded up to 4 because of the pacing.

Thank you NetGalley for an arc copy.
Unfortunately I just couldn't get into this book. I wanted to however the layout and the type of writing I unfortunately DNF.
I will try again to push through at a later date as I do not like to stop a book until its done. The story sounded wonderful and that cover is beautiful.

Impossible not to be engaged by and admiring of this multi-layered, fastidious piece of writing. McEwan is clever, detail-devoted, as curious as ever about disciplines and learning. Is the story entirely plausible and unpredictable? Not really, but I gulped it down nonetheless.

Just finished What We Can Know by Ian McEwan and I was hooked. It starts off slow, but once it grabs you, it does not let go. This one really makes you reflect—on time, perception, and how our lives can look completely different depending on the angle. Thoughtful, layered, and beautifully written. A quiet but powerful read

What We Can Know by Ian McEwan was a beautifully written book. His fans will want to pick up this book on publication day.

What We Can Know is a thoughtful, beautifully written exploration of what it means to understand the world—and ourselves. McEwan blends how we view the past, emotions, and experiences in a way that feels both intelligent and deeply human. It’s the kind of book that invites reflection without ever feeling heavy. A smart, elegant read that sticks with you. While it took some time to get invested in the story, I am glad I continued. Thank you to Knopf and NetGalley for the digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC of What We Can Know. All feedback and opinions expressed are my own.

Where to start? This book was extremely challenging for me on several levels. The first being the formatting. The flow and structuring of sentences where certain things were bolded, where the break in the sentence moved to another line at the start of a new paragraph, etc., put me off from the beginning. I found myself having to go back and re-read to make sure I didn't miss something. The second being the narration/povs. It was like being on the outside looking in on someone’s paraphrased recounting of events but the paraphrasing was being presented as a dissertation. It was a struggle to get through the first half of this book and by that point I feel I just wasn't invested.

While I appreciate the opportunity to read this story as an ARC, I struggled to connect with it and appreciate the story for what it is.

Out September 23rd, 2025
Set in a post-apocalyptic Britain in 2119, the novel follows Thomas Metcalfe, a humanities professor navigating a world reshaped by climate catastrophe and nuclear fallout. His quest to uncover a lost poem— “A Corona for Vivien”—becomes a philosophical journey through time, identity, and the ethics of knowledge. McEwan’s prose is elegant and deliberate, weaving speculative fiction with literary depth, and asking: what do we truly know, and what is forever lost to history?

The novel’s dual timeline structure adds emotional resonance, especially as the second part shifts to Vivien’s perspective a century earlier. This narrative device allows McEwan to explore the ripple effects of art, love, and secrecy across generations. Thematically, the book is rich—touching on surveillance, digital memory, and the erosion of privacy in a hyper-connected world. McEwan’s speculative lens is subtle, more philosophical than technological, making this feel like science fiction “without the science,” as he himself describes it.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for the ARC!

Book review: What We Can Know by Ian McEwan.
Published by Knopf—thank you to the publisher and to NetGalley for my gifted ARC.

This is Ian McEwan at his most ambitious, most unsettling, and arguably most cerebral. What We Can Know spans centuries, collapses timelines, and layers fiction within fiction like a literary Russian doll—only this one opens to reveal grief, betrayal, obsession, and the slow-motion disaster of both personal and planetary collapse.

The novel begins in 2119, in what used to be southern England. Much of the Western world has been submerged due to a catastrophic nuclear accident and climate change, and society limps along with a patched-up version of the internet, cobbled-together academic institutions, and a barely functioning government. Enter Thomas Metcalfe, a historian specializing in the early 21st century, who lives alone and has devoted his career to a single mystery: the missing poem A Corona for Vivien, written and read aloud by the famed poet Francis Blundy during a 2014 dinner party honoring his wife’s birthday. The poem was never published. No copy remains. And yet, over the decades, it has become the stuff of legend—a symbol of what once was, and what has been irretrievably lost.

Tom’s obsession is both endearing and exhausting. He’s your classic McEwan narrator: highly intelligent, morally murky, lonely, and slightly unreliable. He pores over archived fragments and piecemeal records of the dinner party like a detective examining a crime scene, convinced the poem holds answers—not just about Blundy or Vivien, but about the entire pre-collapse world. Why do we romanticize the past? Can art survive catastrophe? Do we preserve culture or distort it by obsessing over it?

About halfway through, McEwan pulls the rug out—gently, but firmly. We shift timelines and voices, landing in Vivien’s own journal entries, which reveal the “truth” behind the poem, the dinner, and the people who have become academic icons in Tom’s future world. And that truth? It’s brutal. It’s intimate. It’s messy in the way real lives are messy. The great poet turns out to be a master of both language and manipulation. Vivien is far more than the long-suffering muse. There’s adultery, neglect, a family tragedy, and even a murder that’s been glossed over or misinterpreted through generations of scholarship.

This part of the novel—Vivien’s voice—is where McEwan absolutely shines. Gone is the cool, academic distance of Tom’s chapters. Vivien’s writing is raw, sharp, and emotionally complex. She’s not looking for anyone’s sympathy, and she’s certainly not interested in being romanticized. Her story flips everything we thought we understood about the mythic poem and forces the reader to confront how often we simplify the past for the sake of comfort, clarity, or narrative.

There’s also a deep, biting irony in the way Tom idolizes the early 2000s—a time that, to him, represents artistic freedom, cultural richness, and a kind of lost Eden. Meanwhile, we, the readers, recognize it as the exact era responsible for the collapse of his world. It’s a clever, gutting critique of our present, one that doesn’t need to shout. It simply lets the future reflect back our current blindness.

Stylistically, the novel is dense. There’s very little dialogue. Most of the narrative unfolds through memory, analysis, and reflection. McEwan’s sentences are sculpted—precise, often gorgeous—but they demand attention. This is not a book to skim. If you try, you’ll miss everything. And that, I suspect, is intentional. The novel is about the limits of knowledge, the distortion of memory, and the way we endlessly revise what we think we know. So of course it resists easy consumption. You have to sit with it. You have to do the work. Just like Tom.

And it’s worth it. Because what you end up with isn’t just a literary mystery or a dystopian future. It’s a layered meditation on what survives us. What’s left when the world floods, when the lights go out, when even the internet stops recording? Maybe a poem. Maybe the wrong version of a story. Maybe nothing. Or maybe everything, just misremembered.

Favorite quote:
“We have robbed the past of its privacy.”
That one line encapsulates the novel’s entire argument—and haunts everything that follows.

In the end, What We Can Know doesn’t give easy answers. It never tries to. Instead, it invites us to question everything: history, scholarship, love, legacy, memory, even the very structure of narrative. You don’t walk away from it with closure. You walk away with questions—and that’s the point.

Five stars. Because only McEwan can make a poem that may not even exist feel like the key to everything we’ve lost.

This book was absolutely beautifully written.

Part 1 had me hooked all the way through. The slow subtle reveals of the world the narrator was living in were expertly done.

Part 2 was equally beautiful. However, I did think it started to drag while describing the awful realities of being a carer for someone with Alzheimer’s. Perhaps this was the authors intention as we were meant to experience the oppressiveness that Vivienne also felt but it was a bit of a slog.

I wished for a Part 3 that revisited what our Part 1 heroes felt at the revelations of Part 2.

Ian McEwan is always a pleasure to read. His writing is deceptively simple and often heads in a direction that lulls the reader into thinking not much is happening beyond a visit to the inner workings of somewhat typical characters and then suddenly there is a very sharp turn.

What We Can Know portrays a parallel set of academics from two different time periods (one in a dystopian future - 2120) and their scholarship, their jealousies and their many sexual affairs. Both sets are rather incestuous in that they are often fishing for sexual partners in the same very small pond.

There is a bit of an obsessive quest for a lost poem by a renowned poet who is a key figure in the 21st century set… And much is influenced by climate change.

Midway through the book, the sharp turn comes and the narrator switches from an academic in the future to one in 2020 who is a key figure in the scholarship of the first narrator.

My apologies if I’ve confused you! It’s not at all confusing when you’re reading it, and I say that as someone who is not a fan of time travel or dystopian fiction.

As much as I was quite drawn into this story and found the setting quite atmospheric, it was hard to like the characters in the book. There is no “hero” in this story. Percy, Rachel and Peter are the most sympathetic, but otherwise these are people with rather wonky moral compasses.

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Wow. Just wow.

Two main stories twisted into one search for some literary treasure that was supposed to shake the whole world.

In 2000 a poem was written from a husband to a wife and then went missing only for a 100+ years into the future , when sea levels have risen- political changes, map changes, two scholars go on a trip to find the long lost poem which would in their minds be as important as Shakespeare or Tennyson.

Memory. Recounting. Love. Humans. Such a beautiful symbolic book on nature and art. Character growth and destruction. So honest with a twist that elevates this book from prose to perfection.

Is this how Ian Mcewan has always written?? because if his character development is always like this- I am on board.

Loved this book.

Thank you netgalley.com for the free ebook!! This was fantastic.

Thank you to NetGalley and to Knopf for the ARC of What We Can Know by Ian McEwan.

Rounding up to 3.5 stars.

In its own way, What We Can Know reminded me of both Hernan Diaz's Trust and of the song "Burn" from Hamilton. What We Can Know touches down in the same realm of how a woman's place in her husband's life can be relegated to the background but still in control of the narrative. This diminishment and potential power can be equal parts heartbreaking, unjust, and freeing, and McEwan shows this in his own way with his own particular brand of character I've come to expect from his work --- one who morally and generally may not be a good person, but their version of the truth is what is remembered regardless of their shortcomings.

The book is told in dual-narration -- the first 52% or so from the perspective of Professor Thomas Metcalfe in 2119 -- a historian of 1990-2030 -- whose work is focused on poet Francis Blundy and his lost magnus opus, A Corona For Vivien, a 15-sonnet epic he wrote for his wife and presented just one copy of to a small birthday dinner party in 2014. Metcalfe has his own struggles in a world changed drastically from the one we know now (nuclear war, rising seas, America is controlled by factions of warlords, Nigeria is the center of the world's power, AI is drastically controlled, etc.). Metcalfe is nostalgic and obsessed with the Blundy dinner, and we spend time with him over the months for his breakthrough on his research.

The book then switches to unravel what truly happened in the past and both shows how what historians and Metcalfe have gleaned over decades and how scraps of the past can only tell a part of the true story.

The first 52% of the book was difficult to read. I'm sure McEwan wrote this months ago, but reading it in July 2025 is impressively difficult given his projections on how the world as we know it ends (Israel and Saudi Arabia team together against Iran, nuclear war, America dissolving into absolute warlord/fascist catastrophe, the harm of AI in the hands of corporations with no regulation, climate change and its present effects, etc.) It says a lot about McEwan for his dead-on understanding of the worst possible options for our world, and if America had a different president right now I might be more in the mood for dystopia, but as it stands right now this just felt far too real and depressing in so many ways. So, I feel really conflicted -- like McEwan, wow, so thoughtful and prescient! But also, man, I'm getting enough of this in the news.

I also struggled a bit overall in that there is very little dialogue in the book. A lot of it is recounting memories and conversations or very, very brief conversations, so the text is very dense. McEwan is so talented, so each paragraph is filled with beautiful description and background and juxtaposition with other areas of the story -- it just means that a 320 page book of his writing takes a lot longer to read than another. He packs a wallop into a very short amount of pages.

McEwan has always excelled at giving such life and reward to even the worst of characters - much the way the world does, even when we don't want it to. Most of his characters here, with the exception of Percy and Peter and Vivien's sister, are selfish, to say the least, and that includes our characters in 2114. McEwan makes you want to hate them or sympathize with them or reflect on their actions all while despising them for what they take for themselves.

I think I'll still be reflecting on this book in the coming days and thinking about its meaning - wondering what I can know about what these two time periods have learned.

What We Can Know

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for providing me with an eARC in exchange for my honest opinion…

Everyone’s horrible and now I have anxiety.

This book was…something! That’s for sure…

The first 50% read like an academic paper, which given the context makes sense but it was tedious and boring and void of much emotion. The only times I felt engaged were the parts where Thomas ruminated on how he felt about the past while studying it, his attachment to it, his longing for it.

Second half was brutal. Vivian displays all the signs of a classic narcissist. Her compulsive serial adultery did nothing but anger and frustrate me. Her feelings surrounding her first husbands illness were understandable, and since we learn of them BEFORE we learn about who she truly is, it humanizes her a bit but her inability to care about her sister WHO HAS CANCER was actually the last straw that made me hate her.

This book was weird to read because it just read like someone who hates women and modern society put all their feelings down on paper and tried to turn it into a narrative.

The murder in the book is weird and just not really explored. It’s not a mystery. Nor is its perpetrator ever truly villainized? Only its enabler is, which like okay good riddance (cause she truly is a horrible person and contributed to the death of her infant daughter) but also what? Francis is almost painted as…misunderstood? Kind? Maybe not quite, but he’s definitely not really depicted as a LITERAL MURDERER. Huh????

This book skyrocketed my anxiety re: climate change, wars, Israel etc etc which normally I wouldn’t mind if I felt it was telling a compelling and necessary story but this just felt like I was being lectured AT (not even lectured to cause I definitely didn’t sign up for that)

Also, Thomas (the main lecturer) wasn’t exactly a great guy but he was painted as a much better person than his lover/wife Rose…and for what? It lended nothing to the plot. Literally nothing. It was almost overlooked but it DID happen just to highlight what…? Another woman being unfaithful? Being horrible?

This book was just frustrating and took me far too long to read without offering me anything to contemplate or think on outside of…everything I already contemplate and think on every time I watch/read the news.

Ian McEwen is one of those authors whose books almost demand to be read twice: once with an open mind, and once with an understanding that nothing was actually what it seemed. *What We Can Know* is almost self-aware in the way it warns readers and questions them at the same time. Before one even gets into the text, the title and epigraph set readers up to ask the following questions while reading: what can we know? What can we believe? What can we love? And most importantly, is any of it the truth?

The plot is straightforward in its simplicity, but this is not a simple story. Tom, a middle-aged scholar in the year 2119 has devoted his academic pursuits to a singular goal: to discover the missing masterpiece, “A Corona for Vivien” by Francis Blundy, a renowned poet. The only copy of the lost poem was given as a gift to his wife, Vivien, after performing it for their guests, at her birthday party in the year 2014.

Tom’s life in 2119 is set in a dystopian near-future existence in which climate change has left much of the planet underwater, killing billions in the process. This allows readers to project themselves forward and face uncomfortable truths about the way our choices will affect future generations. It forces readers to consider their own tendencies and temptations to shake their heads and then ignore the almost unapproachably large issues in the world: genocide, war, and most importantly, climate change. By speculating about the future as if it’s already in the past, McEwen cleverly creates space for a conversation about personal responsibility and the role of the individual in the plight of the global community. It’s odd, yet enlightening, to look at the present through the lens of the future. Everything that is familiar is brought into focus, forcing readers to consider the things one usually takes for granted.

The tone is very interesting. It often reads like a scholarly journal article which makes it easy to forget that this is a work of fiction. The narrator considers the way we are inundated with information in the digital age and how that will be interpreted in future generations, “we have robbed the past of its privacy” (17), while mourning the loss of shared human experience in the face of changing climates and landscapes. In addition to physical changes in the world, McEwen predicts a future in which scholarship has become a form of digital archaeology which raises important ethical considerations. As he works on his research, the narrator considers a vital question of academia: why do we study the past? And when doing so, can we embellish based on educated assumptions or must we always stay firmly grounded in provable facts?

The tale is unsteady, swaying between “fact” and “fiction” in such a way that readers never really gain their footing. It’s thought-provoking and uncomfortable and you never really know if you can trust the narrator. His unreliability lends a fascinating air of uncertainty that mimics the uncertainty one might feel when trying to envision what kind of games young Cleopatra liked to play or if Jesus had a favorite food. You have to wonder: is this adding depth and realism to historical facts or is it making a twisted facsimile of them?

This was very nearly a 5 star read for me. However, I found myself struggling to imagine the geography of the world in 2119. A map would be a very helpful clarifying tool to enrich the narrative. As it is, I found myself skimming through Tom’s travels since I couldn’t visualize this new world. Additionally, the romantic subplot was challenging for me. I didn’t resonate with the character’s connection and the chemistry wavered between feeling forced and nonexistent. This ultimately led to a resolution that felt unsatisfying.



Overall, this book feels like sitting in a university lecture by your favorite professor. You’re in awe of the intellect, the wide range of references they’re able to weave together into cohesive and unique points, but half of it feels like it flies right over your head. You shake your head and pretend you understood that obscure name-drop while furiously googling under the desk and trying to make sense of it all. It’s not until you sit with the thoughts and allow them the time and space to fully form that you are able to grasp the genius you’ve been given access to.

I delved into some of the themes in this review but there is so much more I could say. The narrative explores the heartache and grief of loving someone with Alzheimer’s disease with unflinching realism and heartbreaking empathy. It also offers a beautiful meditation of the role of a poet in society and the limitations and freedoms inherent in the craft. But more than anything else, *What We Can Know* had me asking again and again: what can we really know about ourselves? Our past? Our lovers? Our obsessions? And, ultimately, I’m left with the distinct impression that we can know a lot without ever truly understanding anything.

A huge thank you to Knopf via NetGalley for the digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

What We Can Know looks at the past, how we interpret its events., and how much we can really know about the people who lived before us. Anyone who has questioned an idealized past or is interested in literary history would enjoy this novel.

This book was another hit from the author. Well developed characters and an intriguing storyline keeps the reader interested and yearning for what comes next. The authors prosaic writing style enhances the enjoyment of the book. This is a book which I would recommend to all who enjoy a good fiction read.

I generally enjoy McEwan’s work and was pleased to see him try something somewhat new here, on the more speculative side. I do think he sometimes struggles to write women believably, but I wasn’t bothered very much by that here. I loved the literary mystery as Thomas searches for the corona, and the flashbacks to the dinner were well drawn too.

Set a hundred years in the future, the people of What We Can Know are obsessed with A POEM from 2014. Seriously, a poem! Stop gagging with laughter and enjoy McEwan shoving all boundaries of the novel aside and pruning a wild vine of an idea into the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree.

It takes a bit to ease in, the book begins with the “future” section, but once the brilliantly outlandish premise is established the power of the writing and story never waver for a moment. Parallels to Nabakov’s <i>Pale Fire</i> are hard to miss. McEwan fits so comfortably at a small table of the great living writers of our time.

His fans will explode with joy from this one and many new ones will be gained.

Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf for a review copy.

I read Atonement in high school and it haunted me for years, so I came into What We Can Know with high expectations. This isn’t the kind of book that shocks or overwhelms, but it’s carefully constructed, intellectually engaging, and lingers after you put it down.

The story moves between 2014 and 2119, tied together by a missing poem and the people—past and future—obsessed with it. McEwan is less interested in traditional plot twists and more in how memory, legacy, and interpretation shift across time. The future setting isn’t speculative in the sci-fi sense; it’s more of a literary vantage point, used to frame the fragility of the present.

The book works best as a quiet reflection on art, ego, and what remains after people are gone. There’s a sense of emotional distance to the narration, which might put some readers off, but I found it appropriate for the themes. It’s a novel about knowledge—how limited, flawed, and often uncomfortably partial it is.

Not as emotionally harrowing as Atonement, but just as precise. A rewarding, thoughtful read.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.