A hundred years from now, the planet has been ravaged by natural disasters and nuclear wars. Most of what used to be England is submerged under water. The rest is inhabited by “brown people” (this is not my language, of course, but the way it’s put in the novel). The world is mostly ruled by Nigeria, and it’s a miserable, degraded existence. White people are a tiny minority, abused by the “we are honey, we are golden” brown people (again, this is a direct quote from the book. I have nothing to do with it.)
Most of the brown people exist in a state of bovine indifference to the lost civilization. A few, however, do understand that something precious perished. They try to imitate the literary and scholarly life of the departed world in a clumsy glass-bead game type of fumbling. But they simply lack the capacity to understand what a life of the mind is. Their efforts to make contact with the intellectually and culturally rich life of 2014 fail. All they manage to uncover from the past is a long, self-serving narrative by a whorish, narcissistic woman from a century before their time whose smug stupidity and utter immorality mirrors their own.
What We Can Know has two parts. The first one is narrated by a “scholar” of literature in 2120 who is obsessed by a poet’s wife from 2014. The second part is narrated by that wife. The novel plays a bit of a trick on the readers. Primitive minds with no knowledge of how to read a literary text will look at the text from the same limited perspective as the fake “scholar” from the future. They will take first-person narratives of the scholar from the future and the poet’s wife from the past completely literally. To people who do have a bit more of an understanding of how literature works, McEwan’s novel offers great surprises.
I’m not sure if I can recommend What We Can Know because McEwan takes quite a gamble, dedicating the whole first half of the novel to the painfully earnest mewlings of the future “scholar”. I barely got through it, to be honest. But once you hit the 50% mark and the story switches into the poet’s wife’s narrative, it gets good and you start figuring out what the point of everything is. But only if you have the capacity to figure it out, as I said before.
I don’t like futuristic dystopian narratives but What We Can Know isn’t really about the future. It’s about the need to appreciate art and intellectual pursuits because most people are tragically incapable of either, and if you are blessed with the rare capacity to do it, make sure you treasure it. Also, if you are not a vapid whore, treasure that, as well.
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I’ve read and heard already widely different opinions about this novel, which shows that it is worth reading it I think. I am not sure if I fully follow your thoughts here. I agree that the 2nd part is narrated by a smug, stupid woman. But what do you find so interesting about it?
I liked the first part better and I was disappointed by the ending of the second part, I would have like to circle back to the narrator of the first part and see the reaction and interpretation of the 2nd part.
A colleague of mine who also read the novel observed that he found the poet totally unrealistic because he does not have the personality of a poet. I’m not sure he’s correct but I agree he seemed a bit more like a very successful and annoying novelist than a poet.
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Oh, a person who read! I’m so happy. Thank you for coming by!!
The reason why I didn’t like the 1st part is that it’s poorly done on a technical level. If you are going to do world-building, you need to learn how to do it, and McEwan clearly decided not to bother. He doesn’t show this new world. Instead, he has the narrator describe it in a plodding, boring way. I’m not a “show, don’t tell” absolutist. But there should be at least some effort to show. There are things he describes several times! It’s painful.
I believe that the fact that McEwan didn’t come back to the first narrator is the best thing about the novel on the technical level. Whether the narrator will realize that he married a Vivien and will draw any conclusions about his prospects married to this kind of woman is for each of us to figure out.
As for the personality of the poet, yes, it is completely incongruous. He had no reasons to do what he did. Or none that are clear from the narrative. Which makes sense given that we are dealing with a very unreliable narrator. This is McEwan giving us a hint that we should not be very trusting of what Vivien says. And this is why I like the second part. This is McEwan doing what he does best. This is where he’s showing his artistic mastery. It’s in the shadows between what is hinted at and what is left unsaid and what we have to figure out.
McEwan should not attempt futuristic writing again without taking the trouble to learn how it’s done. He had the material, he had the story, but the mechanisms of delivering it are absent.
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Thank you, now I understand what you mean!
Yes you are right, I personally disliked the novelist already in the 1st part so for me the effect was a bit lost, but now I remember he comes across even more unlikable in the second, and Vivien is of course an unreliable narrator. That might be why my colleague detested the 2nd part so much. And McEwan didn’t really give hints what really happened in the backstory between her and the novelist, we only have her view, which is quite courageous of McEwan in a way. I had not realized this and like the novel better now thinking about this.
I also found it interesting that both women appearing in the novel are borderline evil and very manipulative. I kind of liked that about the novel, it is quite dark.
And I agree, he did not make much of an effort to show the new world, but this did not bother me, I liked that this was very low-key. Also if he had shown in more clearly we would have noticed that it is quite unrealistic — I think the new world does not really make sense, but it should not be read as a realistic future scenario but more a state of mind, kind of a depressive, glum, disconnected way of living in contrast to the life of artists and their friends who are seem in contrast very joyful and connected.
Thank you again, I have almost no people in my life to discuss books so I enjoy this a lot. 🙂
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Same here! Which is why I’m always happy when you come by.
I really like the view of the new world as a state of mind rather than reality. It’s possible that McEwan made it so lifeless in order to make the 2014 life look more vibrant in comparison. And it worked. I felt almost physical relief when Vivien’s part of the narrative began. These were finally highly flawed yet alive people with vibrant lives.
Maybe we can look at the novel as a metaphor for two different ways of being. It might be deeper than I thought.
Have you read McEwan’s novel Amsterdam? I’m considering reading it but I find this author to be very uneven. What We Can Know is his best of what I’ve read so far in my opinion.
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Yes I agree he can be a bit uneven, as you said also in this novel there are several repetitions which should have been cut. I’ve read Amsterdam when I was much younger, but don’t remember being very impressed. My favourite novels of his are “On Chesil Beach” and “Machines Like Me”, the first is one of my all time favourite novels. The second one is a lighter read and also dystopian. I also remember liking his early work “The Comfort of Strangers”, a very dark book.
As I only now notice, these are all novels about failing romantic relationships, apparently in my view this is what he does best. I don’t really love his big novels like “Atonement” or “Lessons” as much, although they’re also worth reading, but you probably know them already.
Btw, I just read “The Land in Winter” by Andrew Miller (also on the Booker short list) and loved it, maybe also something for you to check out? And I’m looking forward to your review of “Flesh”. 🙂
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