Book Review: What We Can Know by Ian McEwan

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By Julie Fesseler, Programming and Visitor Experience Associate

Set in a fractured future where museums cling to higher ground and knowledge itself feels precarious, Julie Fesseler’s What We Can Know book review explores Ian McEwan’s novel, which asks a deceptively simple question: how much of the past can we ever truly recover—and at what cost?

Set in 2119, What Can We Know imagines a world reshaped by wars and climate disasters. Humanity survives on scattered islands, and museums and libraries have been moved to higher ground. In this fractured future, Thomas Metcalfe — a humanities scholar specializing in the period 1990–2030 — becomes obsessed with a long‑lost poem: A Corona for Vivien, read aloud only once at a 2014 dinner party by the poet Francis Blundy. Those present described it as Blundy’s best work. But Blundy gifted the only copy to his wife, and that copy disappeared. Over the decades, the missing poem’s reputation has grown, and Thomas Metcalfe is determined to find it.

The novel is divided into two parts. The first follows Thomas: his life, but mostly his work. The narrator details everything he discovers about the poem and gives us a very complete account of the dinner party and the lives of the guests attending it. The narrator uses every type of information at his disposal — digital data, journals, letters… For this reason, the first half of the book is dense and overwhelming — sometimes even tedious. McEwan uses this excess to mirror our own era’s digital saturation, reminding us how many traces we leave behind through emails, texts, and social media posts.

So, we know that 108 years ago, in 2014, the potato Vivien Blundy held in her hand to peel for supper on her birthday was of the Rooster variety. ‘" prefer them for roasting," she had written recently to her sister Rachel.

I’d like to shout down through a hole in the ceiling of time and advise the people of a hundred years ago: If you want your secrets kept, whisper them into the ear of your dearest, most trusted friend. Do not trust the keyboard and screen. If you do, we’ll know everything.

This section also gives Ian McEwan space to share his opinion on other topics. Since the novel takes place in a post-apocalyptic world and Thomas studies the past, McEwan uses the narrator’s voice to comment on our inaction in the face of climate change and geopolitical conflict. Throughout  the whole first half of the novel, there is a soft but nonetheless persistent critique of our current mindset.

Then, of course, hardly worth repeating, they watched amazed as the decades sped by and the Derangement gathered pace, the weapons proliferated and they did little, even as they knew what was coming and what was needed. Such liberty and abandon, such fearful defiance. They were brilliant in their avarice, quarrelsome beyond imagining, ready to die for bad and good ideas alike.

Yet the author also captures the beauty of our everyday life. Seeing our world through Thomas’s eyes makes it difficult not to share his nostalgia for what has been lost.

My list was long — the suspension bridges, the orchestras, street parties and a thousand forms of music festivals, and people’s gardening and cooking, their need for holidays, extreme sports, historical enactments, gay-pride carnivals, the risks they took with A.I., the sense of humour, the safe airplanes, the passion for pointless sports. A hundred thousand at a football match!

Midway through the novel, everything shifts: a new clue emerges, and Thomas embarks on a kind of treasure hunt for the missing poem.

The second part of the book is completely different: a new narrator, a new writing style, a new interpretation of the events of 2014. This second half is far more entertaining and captivating, transforming the book into a page-turner. We switch from academic discussions and history lessons to stories of relationships, grief, secrets and revenge. This second half is way more entertaining and captivating, transforming the book into a page-turner. And the meticulous detail of the first half suddenly pays off, as the information given will reveal their importance.

Together, the two sections combined convey the main message of the novel: what can we really know ? By juxtaposing Thomas’s story, the story he interprets from historical records, and the “true” events of 2014, Ian McEwan delivers a powerful discourse on knowledge and the reliability of historiography. The author invites us to be careful about how we glorify certain eras or certain people. He also invites us to challenge the reliability of historical documents and to ask ourselves whether a document is biased, whose point of view is being shared, what is being held back, and how we can verify information.

In the end, What Can We Know becomes a reflection on the stories we inherit, the stories we construct, and the stories we choose to believe. Through Thomas Metcalfe’s obsessive search for a missing poem, McEwan confronts us with the fragility of knowledge and the responsibility that comes with interpreting the past.

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Pick up your own copy of What We Can Know at the Bookstore at The Whyte - 111 Bear Street, Banff, Alberta or Shop Online.

For more information on visiting The Whyte, visit us online at whyte.org/visit. The museum is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

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