What We Can Know takes place in post-apocalyptic Britain in 2119. Climate change and "The Derangement" have cut down the population by two thirds. What's left of Britain is a collection of islands; everything else is underwater. The United States is made up of warring gangs. Britain is relatively stable, but the ease and excesses that we take for granted now are long in the past.
Thomas Metcalfe is a scholar who is investigating a lost poem written in 2014. A famous poet, Francis Blundy wrote a poem for his wife, Vivien Blundy. He wrote it down on old-fashioned vellum, read it aloud at an intimate dinner party, and then gave the one and only copy to Vivien. Nobody knows where it went, but word of it spread. Even though no one knew the actual words, the poem took on a life of its own as people gave their own meaning to it.
I had some problems getting into this book. I didn't really care about the poem, and McEwan wasn't giving me enough information about the characters to care about them or even keep them straight. I resorted to a little cheat sheet to keep the dinner party guests straight. In addition, I wasn't particularly attached to Thomas or his co-worker/girlfriend/wife, Rose. They seemed to be using each other more than really caring for each other.
I often think back to the people in the 1800's and wonder how they could do so many heartless, irrevocable things, including hunting numerous species to extinction. I remember learning how millions of bison used to cover the western plains before they were summarily executed and left to rot on the ground. And now I think people in the future will look back at us and wonder why we were so careless about our Earth and our resources. How is it defensible to use plastic bags for groceries? Something that lasts thousands of years for a slight convenience that lasts moments. McEwan hits this point directly. Thomas is obsessed with Blundy's poem and his wife and the time period they lived in. Rose and Thomas are jealous of the beauty and natural abundance that we take for granted now, and they are angry with how ignorant and uncaring we were.
But the book is about a lot more than that. About two thirds of the way through the novel, it shifts perspective. Suddenly, we are back in the early 2000's with Vivien Blundy. Her part of the story is much more detailed, and her life was a lot more interesting to me. I was struggling through the rest of the story, but this last third reminded me of why I liked reading McEwan's books.
Vivien describes how she met her first husband, Percy, and how he became sick. We already know the broader strokes of this story because of Thomas's deep research into her life. However, even with all of the electronic records from that time at his disposal, he was missing so much. It is only when we hear from Vivien that we really understand what had happened.
I did like this book. Even though I was occasionally frustrated in the first two thirds of the book, the last third made up for it. I've also found myself thinking about it way after I read it. It's easy to see how I am one of the ones the future population will look back on and wonder why I didn't do more. Thomas says something about how absurd it is that people would fly halfway across the world, just to go on vacation for a couple weeks. My husband and I do exactly that. We are so busy with our own personal lives in the present that we don't connect our actions to what may happen in the future. And then there are the truths about Vivien's life when Thomas believed something different for so long. McEwan wrote a pointed, layered novel that has stuck with me.
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