Exercises

"Exercises" is an emotional psychological drama for leisurely reading with elements of the author's own biography, structurally resembling scattered pieces of a mosaic. In the middle of the 20th century, as the world is still counting the cost of World War II, the life of eleven-year-old Roland Bains is turned upside down. His military father takes him from Libya and places him in an English boarding school, where his vulnerability attracts a young piano teacher, Miriam Cornell. An irrational and tragic first love will thread through the boy's entire life. Much later, when Roland's wife disappears, leaving him alone with a young son, he will seek answers in his youth and in the history of his family. Ian McEwan describes the chronicle of pivotal events in European history from the 20th to the 21st century through the prism of Roland's life, a characteristic representative of his generation. "When you read this multi-layered and eventful novel by Ian McEwan, you involuntarily recall the ironic pun of the title of another novel - 'The Art of Tailoring and Living' by Bulat Okudzhava. Here too, there is a fine edge to the pun: Lessons - so simply the book is called in English. But this simple, at first glance, title includes many meanings, balancing between piano lessons taken by the hero in childhood, and lessons of 'living', when musical exercises almost imperceptibly turn into exercises of playing the piano for him, relationships with people, political activity, in short, into exercises of life. In these endeavors, the hero suffers one failure after another: he becomes neither a distinguished pianist, nor a prominent political figure, nor a successful head of the family. The reason for his life of failures is selfishness, multiplied by indecision and fear of life's challenges, which repeatedly demanded from him decisiveness and unambiguous decisions and actions. And no one offered him such exercises..." - Oleg Alyakrinsky, translator.