Welcome to Miles of Books. I'm your host Sarah Bowen-Shay. In this episode,

Alison Wiesk and I are going to talk about new novels. Hello, Ellison. Hey there, Sarah. How are you?

I am doing well. So I actually have to take a break from reading to come record because I have not finished.

I will admit I have not finished any of these books, but my goodness, I am so engrossed in the first one that we're going to talk about.

I understand why.

Yes.

It is the latest offering from a British writer who I think is one of the finest living authors, and I suspect I'm not alone in that assertion.

Right. Ian McEwen, perhaps best known for his 2001 novel, Atonement. I can't believe it's been that long since that novel came out.

Oh my gosh. Where does time go? Yeah. Yeah. So his new offering, again, the one I'm obsessed with, is what we can know. And this is a different genre somewhat than McEwen usually writes, wouldn't you say? Oh, yes, definitely. And I saw him interviewed and the interviewer said the exact same thing.

And McEwen made an interesting point, and I'm not giving anything away here, but he said

that he's always been fascinated with dystopian novels, but he didn't want to take it from a

scientific angle.

He wanted to come at it it from a scientific angle.

He wanted to come at it more from an arts angle.

And he definitely does that in this book.

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. It is just so well-crafted.

It is.

Yes, so tell folks about the kind of parallel tracks, the two different time occurrences that are, things are happening in. So yeah, lay it on us. Oh, yeah. Well, the real time is 2119, and it's in the highlands of the UK. And we've got this young man who is a scholar at what's called the University of the South Downs.

And it's located on the remaining part of Britain.

Because as they get to it, there was this big catastrophe that happened later in the 21st century.

And he is fascinated with an artist and his wife who lived and essentially sort of evolved more in the early 2000s. And in 2014, the artist who's a poet

decides for his wife's birthday, he's going to construct a corona for her, which is an extremely

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