Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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What will people think of us 100 years from now?

What We Can Know by Ian McEwan

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I have read a number of books by Ian McEwan, including Atonement, Amsterdam, On Chesil Beach, Saturday, and The Children Act. Even though it’s been over ten years since I’ve read a McEwan book, I remember being impressed by his writing and enjoying his books. Thus, when I saw a number of lists touting What We Can Know (2025), I figured it was time to get back to him. What We Can Know takes place in post-apocalyptic Britain in 2119. Climate change and “The Derangement” have cut down the population by two […]

Ugh. Meh? Mwah. Ehn.

Lessons by Ian McEwan

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As in, I’m finding it hard to express my feelings about this book. Not because I enjoyed it (I didn’t). Eloquence is overrated anyway.  The plot: a young boy in 1960s England is sent to boarding school, is molested by his (female) piano teacher, then has a relationship with her that lasts for years and hampers him for the rest of his life. We watch Roland Baines grow up, faff around, have a child, fall in and out of love. The red thread in the […]

Ian McEwan (1); William Shakespeare (1-2)

Nutshell by Ian McEwan

Hamlet by William Shakespeare

Macbeth by William Shakespeare

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Nutshell – 4/5 Stars “So here I am, upside down in a woman.” Ian McEwan has been writing and publishing near on 50 years. His fiction can be a little hit or miss, with some of his more famous works like the Booker Prize winning Amsterdam often seen as his weakest. For me this is simply not true because he recently published an embarrassing parody of Kafka about the Boris Johnson administration called The Cockroach. This is also one of his more recent books, and […]

Beautiful, thoughtful, heartbreaking

Atonement by Ian McEwan

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My white whale!  I have been trying and failing to read Atonement for about three years, so I am excited to say that not only have I finished it, but I really enjoyed it! The other times I have started reading, I have remained stuck in the book’s opening section, which covers the course of one summer day in the 1935 at the country house of the Tallis family. The Tallis’ youngest child, Briony, is a precocious creative sort who has written a play she […]

Rise of the Vermin

The Cockroach by Ian McEwan

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Bonnie reviewed this on here, it sounded very much relevant to my interests, so I ordered it and read it in one sitting. Don’t remember the last time I did this and to be fair, Cockroach is very short, but it still felt great to do this again. The book is Ian McEwan’s take on Kafka’s Metamorphosis, except that instead of a young depressed man turning into a beetle, a cockroach turns into a powerful buffoon, namely the British Prime Minister. This Prime Minister – […]

What are you hiding underneath that skin suit?

The Cockroach by Ian McEwan

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Ian McEwan has his hits and misses, but by gum, everything he writes is memorable. It’s interesting to see him return to short fiction, since that’s where his career started. I don’t remember all the stories from , but I DO remember opening my mouth in shock a few times. He didn’t earn the nickname “Ian Macabre” for nothing. And with The Cockroach, we DEFINITELY get some wild and memorable moments. If you read Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and thought “This, but in reverse,” you’ll be […]



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