Review

It’s 2119, and the world looks very different. Due to a combination of nuclear war and global warming, the sea levels have risen significantly, and people are living on smallish islands, on what was higher ground. The world is far more ecological now: people ride wooden framed ebikes and take ecologically fuelled ferries to cross from one island to another. The geopolitical situation is very different. There’s far less reading and far less technology. In universities, the humanities are small and underfunded, with most money going to the science and engineering faculties. People are figuring out how to make the world work again, or better.

Tom, a humanities academic, specialises in the period 1990 to 2030. He’s fascinated by this period: a time of idiotic squandering of the earth’s resources, but also a wildly riotous and creative era with an incredible variety of foods, music, art, and easy travel from one country to another. He’s particularly interested in the poet Francis Blundy and his famous but disappeared poem, ‘A Corona for Viven’, a (legendarily) beautiful poem, written for his wife’s birthday in a difficult poetic form, of which only one copy existed, with none in publication. Where was it? Did it still exist? Was it, as some suggested, destroyed by Big Oil? Conspiracy theories abounded.

Following a lead about the poem, Tom makes a stunning discovery that shifts his perspective on a story he thought he knew inside out.

*

This was an interesting book. I must admit that the futuristic post-apocalyptic setting really hooked me in: not that I love that sort of thing, but if it had all been set in a contemporary realistic setting, I think I would have passed. I was curious to see what McEwan would do with it.

It was, for me, the sort of book that I found very intriguing in patches, and a bit tedious in others. I enjoyed the human parts, especially Tom’s early recreation of Vivien’s birthday party, and the mystery of ‘what happened to the poem’ kept it ticking along fairly well. There were times when I would long for a chapter break, and leaf through a few pages to glumly discover that there wouldn’t be one for ages. (Authors: shorter chapters, please!) I enjoyed the perspective shift (second part of the novel), which I didn’t realise was coming because I didn’t bother reading the blurb on the back of the book to its conclusion.

It certainly was about ‘What We Can Know’, and I did leaf through and check back through some earlier bits once I’d finished. It was fairly clever. I expected it to have more of an environmental theme, but really it’s much more about academia, with lots about publishing, the difficulties of teaching uninterested undergraduates, and how much we can validly extrapolate from research.

Enjoyable and mostly entertaining. For year 10 & up, but mainly because younger students simply wouldn’t be interested in it. Literary fiction: best for skilled, patient & experienced readers.

> Click here for content information — spoilers, enter at own risk!

Post-apocalyptic world, due to nuclear wars & global warming; many sexual affairs – no salacious details; much of the plot involves Vivien’s first husband having Alzheimer’s and her having to look after him; there is a murder – brutal, but fairly briefly described; cheerful amorality.

*

McEwan, I. (2025). What we can know. Jonathan Cape.

Images are used on this blog post under the “Fair dealing for criticism or review” provision of the Commonwealth Copyright Act, 1968.

I read this novel for free thanks to a public library — support your local library by visiting & borrowing!