What We Can Know by Ian McEwan [6/10]

That Ian McEwan is a master literary craftsman, I have never doubted, and I’ve marvelled at many of his novels, in different voices and registers. From the moment I saw that his latest outing, What We Can Know, tackles the pursuit of an academic in dystopian 2119 England of a lost, apparently wonderful 2014 poem, I longed the read it. And to be fair, What We Can Know is smoothly written, artfully constructed, and fascinating in its worldbuilding. McEwan has hypothesized a semi-calamitous future with the diligence that only he can. The future academic burrows into the stored digital life of the long-dead poet and others at a party where the feted (but lost) poem was read in honour of his wife, and the plot is handled assuredly enough. The author’s voice is solid and assertive, almost academic, suiting his plot. Yet What We Can Know runs aground (at least to this reader) on shoals familiar to anyone reading literary titans tackling genre fiction: they’re just not adept at the unfamiliar genres. This novel is half science fiction, and the author’s worldbuilding holds intellectual interest rather than unfolding in a compelling manner; we read and nod, but we are not swept up. And the novel is half a thriller, with a plot that is executed stolidly but without flair; I guessed the climax (with its typically McEwan-style abrupt ending) early on. The net result is What We Can Know is worth reading—for who can resist Ian McEwan?—but never sparks into life.