998 words
Note: all relevant plot points have not been discussed in order for you to enjoy this book as much as possible.
Last year’s release, What We Can Know by Ian McEwan, is one of the most pertinent books that you have most likely not read. Not only are the subject matter and its many themes directly relevant to how you and all of your peers are conducting yourselves, but it is written by one of today’s foremost virtuosic writers, who, after decades of bringing us classics like Atonement and The Cement Garden, is only getting better at his craft. For the record, I have read all of Mr. McEwan’s books, save for three of his most recent publications: Machines Like Us, The Cockroach, and Lessons.
What We Can Know benefits from Mr. McEwan’s well-known strength of bringing unexpected twists, some grand and many subtle, that casual readers who read passively will most certainly miss. The premise of this title makes it a must-read for everyone, especially those who spend time online outside of work.
The book takes place a century in the future, well after humanity has nearly destroyed itself many times over due to idiotic wars and the constant harm we will inflict on our dear planet. The book’s main character is a historian studying a poet who was active mainly from the 2000s to the mid-2020s. Along the way, we find that the main character develops an unhealthy infatuation with the poet’s wife, a century after her passing, and we see his marriage’s troubles mirrored in those he comes to study.
Historians in the future, like our main character, are able to paint a very clear picture of how we lived our lives by going through our digital footprints and any analog ones, such as journals and papers, if they survived. The sheer amount of data left behind in digital calendars, posts, emails, and text messages would give these historians the utmost confidence in painting a very clear picture not only of what people did, but also of the intentions behind those actions.
The book is structured in two parts, similar to Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet. The first part is organized into chapters, while the second is unstructured and contains only breaks. The driving mechanism behind this in Mr. McEwan’s work won’t be discussed, as it would spoil the first part of the book for the reader. Where Hamnet used the unstructured second part to move more freely with respect to time, What We Can Know does this to a much smaller degree, but in a manner which does not disrupt the rising tempo of the book’s first section as Hamnet did.
On the face of it, the book’s themes spread from our irresponsibility towards our planet’s climate, to how everyone’s private lives contain much more nuance than we give credit for, to ultimately that humans as a species are incapable of thinking on the macro level/long-term and are focused on the immediate and macro. Topics such as how we fared in light of the pandemic and the wars that continued only proved this and were heightened by the future laid out before us.
Arguably the most relevant theme for most readers is the drawing of severe caution about what we choose to put on the internet and about our overall digital footprint. Just as we had hoped for the best and never took the themes in the previous paragraph seriously, we still to this day do not take our privacy rights with the severity they deserve. There are plenty of examples of people using platforms to have private conversations, only to have those conversations used against them in future legal suits. There are even recent examples of countries which are trending towards authoritarianism to use consumer products such as security cameras sold by Ring to place arrests without warrants. The concerns of today are more disturbing than what Mr. McEwan covered in this title, for he only referred to the devices and their services that I suspect he has been subjected to. This only makes his message of practicing care of what you put out there more prevalent.
All too often, we open any number of META-owned social media applications and see friends, colleagues, family members, acquaintances, and strangers sharing every thought they come across throughout the day. A lot of these do not paint their personalities and temperaments in a favourable light. Unfortunately, in my experience, even when this matter is discussed, they continue to engage in this behaviour.
Our innate need to be seen or heard needs to be balanced with the reality that we are our own public relations agent, and that we need to be careful about how we present ourselves. We never know how the information we put out there can be used against us or others. A lot of people also write for an imaginative audience, presenting themselves as how they would like to be perceived, but this runs its own gamut of risks, which Mr. McEwan covers.
There is a lot of thought-provoking material in What We Can Know, and McEwan’s prose will lighten your load and occasionally sweep you off your feet. Several passages, such as “Several years later, her situation prompted wonder among her friends,” to “The handwriting tips forward,” to “Poetry had a lowering effect on him,” fill every page, drawing a contrast to one’s normal life to that of one crafted by a true maestro.
Mr. McEwan even expressed the challenges of caregiving for a loved one with a level of grace I have not read elsewhere. “Her duty was to respect and maintain his dignity,” stands as the singular example of how these pages are so incredibly rich. What We Can Know is an outstanding example of how the novel, when in the hands of a great writer, can illuminate several topics and themes while never losing sight of its main goal. Recommending this book comes as easily as recommending water to the dehydrated, for we are in desperate need of more works such as this.
Recommended further reading if you enjoyed the mood, pace, and tone of What We Can Know:
The Ministry of the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson
Purge by Sofi Oksanen
Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan
Time of writing: February 17th, 2026
