I’ve long been a fan of Kavan’s work, ever since a copy of her second novel leapt off the shelves and into my hands due to its title: Let Me Alone.

At last! I thought. Someone who speaks my language.

This, her first novel, published in 1929, is the story of an English family whose life has become so enclosed as to become toxic. A modern town, loud with trams and lorries and motorcycles, has grown up around their walled home, an old vicarage. What is a refuge for the parents—Dr. Deane who has ceased to practice and spends his days among his books and autocratic Mrs. Deane whose only friends are two elderly sisters who live outside of town—has become a prison for the three children, who are now young adults.

At the beginning of the story, Ronald, the spoiled, feckless son, has gone off to London to work and is much envied by the lively, independent Beryl, while her older sister Olive has become a melancholy mouse. Beryl no sooner decides to ask her brother to help her escape to London than she finds he’s returning home, bored with having to earn a living.

At the same time, two young men enter the family’s closed sphere: a sculptor whom Ronald met in London comes for a weekend and the nephew of the two elderly sisters who has come to the area to take up farming. Between them, they offer opportunities for the sisters and raise the stakes for any potential escape.

It is the language in this psychological novel that intrigues me: precise, cool, and brusque. Kavan’s Spartan prose style contrasts with the stuffy, ornate atmosphere of the vicarage, thus increasing the tension around the family. It also sets the reader up for the different sort of life Beryl might discover in London.

Slipping out of the grasp of a controlling parent is a theme that always interests me. The post-war period of the 1920s, like the 1960s, was a time when women were doing the same with society’s expectations for them. As they try to assert their independence, both Beryl and Olive continue to surprise throughout this story.

Their father insists that they—and the rest of the family—will always fail, saying:

There is some defect in us all, some flaw, some canker of the soul that holds us back from fruition. Life is too hard for us. We yearn and struggle and rebel, but in the end we are always vanquished because of that obscure disability. We cannot succeed because we are not free. Some inhibition, some fatal limitation, binds us, from which we can never escape.

Kavan’s prose is unusual in that it is forthright in this way. She plumbs the motives of the characters, their feelings and unspoken words and then tells us straight out. Using an omniscient point of view, she inhabits the characters in turn, giving the reader a full picture of their psychological states and the reasons for their actions.

While I usually prefer a single point of view and more subtlety in fiction, I found this story refreshing. I also felt confident that I was in good hands with this author and surprised by her skill in this first novel. In her later novels, Kavan moves from this realism to a more experimental style.

If you’re looking for something a little different, I recommend this book. Its breezy style and brief chapters make it almost fly by. And it’s hard not to care about these characters as they try to assert the freedom to be themselves.

Do you enjoy a novel more when you identify with one of the characters?

The story begins in May 1986 with 37-year-old Roland Baines worrying about how the Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster might harm his infant son in their London home. Sleepless, he remembers being 14, at boarding school, and the experience that changed his life.

McEwan’s latest novel gives us that life. All of it. The novel clocks in at 448 pages, which is way too long to spend in the company of someone who is not particularly interesting. I would have abandoned it early on if it hadn’t been my book club’s choice for the month.

Some in the book club found Roland boring, and most of us considered him passive, someone who drifts through life, reluctant to make a commitment. The few decisions he does make are self-destructive, twisting his future away from achievement and accomplishment into the morass of surviving on low-level dead-end jobs.

When we meet him in 1986 he still thinks of himself as—potentially—a professional poet, but is working as a tennis instructor and piano player in a lounge, while caring for his son. “How easy it was to drift through an unchosen life,” he thinks.

The story skips around in time, too much so according to some in my book club who found the narrative hard to follow. We learn that his German-born wife left him to bring up their newborn son as a single parent while she goes off to become the successful writer he aspired to be. Far from resenting her, milquetoast Roland thinks she did the right thing because her novels are so good.

My book club discussed the idea that not everyone does great things; there are ordinary people who just deal with their circumstances and go on. There have been many great novels about such people. This is not one of them. It’s too long-winded, and the main character too dull.

Roland’s passivity leads to a reluctance to commit himself: to a career, a partner, a skill. The only commitment that doesn’t waver is to his son. That is the best thing I can say about Roland. He changes the diapers, takes him to the playground, does the laundry and cooking. Not a small job, of course, but are we supposed to think him extraordinary because he does what women everywhere do to no applause?

The book is set in motion, in a sense, by the Cuban Missile Crisis. Convinced he is about to die, young Roland makes a choice that turns out to be disastrous for his future. Throughout the story, the events of his life are tied to events in the larger world. He is present for the fall of the Berlin Wall. We see how he is affected by the Suez Canal crisis, the attack on the World Trade Center, Margaret Thatcher’s reign, Brexit, and finally the Covid pandemic.

Having Roland be a microcosm of an entire generation—the privileged one that enjoyed the post-war boom and surge in educational opportunities—feels insulting. The author comes across as a chiding teacher, saying that we Boomers, like Roland, have never lived up to our potential. Well, perhaps we haven’t, but we are not all such failures.

My book club has read several of McEwan’s books. We agree that his writing is excellent, but unfortunately his characters too often are not interesting and even unpleasant. Also, as here, female characters are not developed well. From Roland’s predatory piano teacher to his narcissistic ex-wife to his Earth Mother girlfriend, they are one-note characters. Of course, in this case we are seeing them through Roland’s eyes, which perhaps says more about him.

As a writer I was most interested in how the author brilliantly integrates current events into the story. They are not tacked to add context, but function fully as part of Roland’s story. I find much to admire in McEwan’s writing and have loved some of his books. This one needed an editor.

Have you read a novel that failed to live up to its potential? Where do you think it went off course?