The Lessons
I tried to put an image of the cover of ‘The Lessons’ at the top of this, but wasn’t sure if I could do it properly and as Injera is away for a month I didn’t want to risk stuffing it up and her not being here to fix it! But on to the book. I loved pretty much everything about ‘The Lessons’, from the cover onwards. The characters were so well written, I could picture them really clearly. And I think Alderman did an amazing job narrating the book as a male. I thought her story about the double edged sword of financial freedom/independent wealth was an interesting one – Mark had all the money he needed, a property, the means to go on extended European jaunts etc, but in order to have these things he had to behave in a way that was appropriate to his family. A family who he had no real emotional connection with. I think we only met his mother, and there was clearly no warmth, empathy or closeness in their relationship.
I’m assuming if you’re reading this you have read the book, but if not spoiler alert….. I got a pretty big surprise when James and Mark got together. I thought that James was just another attractive thing that Mark wanted to surround himself with – I wasn’t surprised that Mark made a play for James but was very surprised when it was reciprocated. I think my surprise was there because the book was written with James’ voice and there had been no indication that he felt that way – or were there indications and I just didn’t pick them up? As far as I could tell he seemed perfectly, heterosexually, happy with Jess.
The only thing that I found a little unsatisfying when I got to the end was that I couldn’t quite work out what the lessons were that had been learned. Maybe I’ll have to do a little further reading to get other peoples’ ideas on that. I’m not feeling particularly insightful or creative at the moment, I think I’ll go for a walk and se if I can come up with any other ideas about the book!
