Two stories, one let-down

What We Can Know
IAN MCEWAN

(JONATHAN CAPE, 320 PP, £22)
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Fifty years on from the publication of his first book, First Love, Last Rites, Ian McEwan’s new novel reads like an inventory of everything he’s published in the interim. You want a horrified disquisition on climate change, à la Solar? Check. You want a humanist aesthete hero convinced that poetry can save the world, à la Saturday? Check. You want ghastly, Grand Guignol violence, à la The Innocent? Check. The problem with What We Can Know is that it never melds these elements into a coherent whole.

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