Tangled lives

Lessons **** by Ian Mcewan (Jonathan Cape, £20) If somebody told you the plot of Ian Mcewan’s 17th novel, you might assume it was written by William Boyd. It’s classic Boyd territory – the sprawling story of one man’s life spanning 70 years.

There are many similarities between the man in question, Roland Baines, and Mcewan himself. Both were born in 1948, both are soldiers’ sons who spent part of their childhood in Tripoli, and both have half-siblings whom they only met late in life.

But clearly Roland is far from a self-portrait as, unlike Mcewan, he is a non-achiever who has drifted through life after failing in his early ambition of becoming a concert pianist.

And yet, as Roland’s life unfolds – including a difficult period as a single father – Mcewan shows how a life of less tangible achievements than his own is worth celebrating.

As in Boyd’s novels, we see how the course of a person’s life is directed by a mixture of great historical events – the Cuban Missile Crisis, Chernobyl,

Brexit – and personal relationships that often come about by chance.

This is the longest novel Mcewan has written and it’s a very different beast from some of the taut, tight books he’s famous for.

As in most long, episodic novels, some chapters are more interesting than others. But Lessons has the wonderful freshness that comes when an author tries something new – along with Mcewan’s customary wit, insight and compassion.

Jake Kerridge

All The Broken Places **** by John Boyne (Doubleday, £20)

John Boyne returns with the long-awaited sequel to his bestselling 2006 novel The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas.

All The Broken Places relates what happened to Gretel, Bruno’s 12-year-old sister, after the end of the first novel. When we meet her, she is 91 and living in an expensive apartment in central London.

Widowed with a son, she leads a solitary life and is resistant to change. So she is horrified when she hears that the flat below her is to be sold, meaning new neighbours will move in and she will have “to feign an interest in his or her life… or divulge small details about [her] own”.

Gretel doesn’t want to divulge anything, as her whole life is constructed around secrets and lies to hide the truth about her upbringing in a prominent Nazi family.

The novel tells her story by interweaving past and present, from fleeing Poland as a teenager after her father’s execution to starting a new life in Australia, and again in London. No matter where she goes, her past is never far behind.

But when a new family with secrets of their own moves into the apartment below, she is finally forced to confront her past.

Gretel is a prickly character whose life has been dominated by shame, guilt and fear. Her journey towards acceptance and redemption is complicated and painful at times, asking difficult questions about complicity and culpability.

But her story is beautifully told and gripping from first page to last.