What We Can Know by Ian McEwan asks what is truth and is it important? Can an unpublished poem recited once at a dinner party 100 years ago be worthy of fame and adulation? 
In an ambitious novel encompassing a century and a planet affected by climate change and war, McEwan explores the overlapping of facts and lies, secrets never revealed and truth casually brushed aside. In 2119, a literature scholar sets out to find the lost manuscript of famous 21st century poet Francis Blundy. Tom Metcalfe takes dangerous and tedious journeys across Britain’s new archipelago landscape to find Blundy’s ‘Corona for Vivien’ and considers how historians and academics make assumptions about truth based on the hard evidence in front of them.
McEwan’s 22nd century world has some similarities to today and many differences. The global population is tiny and young people question the efforts of older historians to discover what happened in the past. How can events that occurred 100 years ago, they ask, have relevance for us? Today, say student protestors, is what matters.
In two timelines, Tom in 2119 and Blundy and Vivien in 2014, McEwan tells us the truth of the missing poem. Hand-written on one copy of vellum, a gift from the poet to his wife Vivien, the poem achieves fame way beyond expectations. Convinced there must be a hard copy of the poem somewhere, Tom compiles a timeline using texts, emails and journals of everyone present at that 2014 dinner party. But digital communications can be deleted, diary entries rewritten, journals edited for publication.
In 2014, Vivien is not taken with her husband’s tribute though his editor says it is ‘a monument to a threatened biological civilization’ with echoes of Wordsworth and Eliot. Vivien remembers the love her first husband, violin-maker Percy, had for the natural world, watching a passing butterfly, identifying wildflowers. Francis is a quiet climate change sceptic.
The lack of a clear timeline and the distortion of fact and fiction can be disorientating. McEwan asks us to consider the modern relationship with news, fact and truth and applies it to the past. How much of the truth is on show, how much hidden? The first quarter is slow and rather dense, mirroring the lies the characters are telling themselves and others, lots of smoke and mirrors, personas assumed, roles played. At times it is unclear whose point of view is being expressed but as the characters become clearer, as secrets and shames are revealed, the story becomes more transparent and the pace picks up. I raced through the final third to a clever, unexpected ending.
Complex, thought-provoking, challenging, What We Can Know is a must-read novel in today’s world of fake news.
Read these reviews of other McEwan novels:-
MACHINES LIKE ME
NUTSHELL
THE CHILDREN ACT
Read the #FirstPara of:-
ENDURING LOVE
THE CEMENT GARDEN
THE CHILDREN ACT
If you like this, try these:-
‘The Ship’ by Antonia Honeywell
‘The Choice’ by Claire Wade
‘The Last of Us’ by Rob Ewing
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