The blurb on the cover of the book reads:

“When the world is still counting the cost of WW2 and the Iron Curtain has descended, young Roland Baines’s life is turned upside down. 2000 miles from his mother’s protective love, stranded at an unusual boarding school, his vulnerability attracts his piano teacher, Miriam Cornell, leaving scars as well as a memory of love that will never fade.

25 years later, Roland’s wife mysteriously vanishes, leaving him alone with their baby son. He is forced to confront the reality of his rootless existence. As the radiation from the Chernobyl disaster spreads across Europe, he begins a search for answers that looks deep into his family history, and will last for the rest of his life. From the Suez and Cuba Missile crises and the fall of the Berlin Wall to the Covid pandemic and climate change, Roland sometimes rides with the tide of history, but more often struggles against it.

Haunted by lost opportunities, he seeks solace through every possible means – literature, travel, friendship, drugs, sex and politics. A profound love is cut tragically short. Then, in his final years, he finds love again in another form. His journey raises important questions. Can we take full charge of the course of our lives without damage to others? How do global events beyond our control shape our lives and our memories? And what can we learn from the traumas of the past?”

Quote from Ian McEwan:

… certain dark events in our early life can cast long shadows, and … coming to terms with it often means rewriting it, understanding it anew, not knowing even that it’s abuse. Some, or maybe even many, victims of abuse think of themselves as the agent, of having agency in it, having choices, when in fact they are too young to have choices.

A long book, in which historical events, from the 1950s to the present, serve as a ’soundtrack‘ to the novel, which follows the main character, Roland Bains, through the whole of his life.

Music played:

• J.S. Bach The Well-Tempered Klavier Book 1 First Prelude, played by Lang Lang
• Mozart Piano Duet K448, Allegro con Spirito played by Daniel Barenboim and Martha Argerich
• Fever sung by Peggy Lee
• The Girl from Ipanema, piano version, played by Claudio Lanz

This month Reading Circle members have recommended the following books:

• Val McDermid: 1979 and 1989 – two books about a new character, Alison Burns, investigative journalist, by the Scottish ‘Queen of Crime’.
• Annie Ernaux (Nobel Prize-winner for Literature): A Man’s Place (translated from the French) – the author explores her ambivalent feelings towards her father and her background, creating a vibrant homage to her parents and documenting the way of life of their social class.
• Joseph Stiglitz: People, Power and Profits : Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent. The author, a professor at Columbia University, points to the dangers of unfettered markets and monied politics and offers an alternative path forward from predator capitalism to progressive capitalism.
• Monica Ali: Love Marriage – An entertaining exploration of multicultural British modernity – love, sex, politics, faith and family – from the author of Brick Lane.
• Gwen Strauss: The Nine – The true story of how nine young women, captured by the Nazis for being part of the resistance, launched a breathtaking escape from a death march and found their way home.

Join us again next month when we will be discussing Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep. The publicity for this book says: ‘This is the story Harper Lee (author of To Kill a Mockingbird) wanted to write. This is the story of why she couldn’t.’