Ian McEwan at the Royal Northern College of Music

The whole team of Bad Language went on a visit to the Royal Northern College of Music yesterday to see the lovely Ian McEwan reading from his new book Solar.

I have to admit I've never read an Ian McEwan book before but I was curious to see him speak and now I am burning to read his new book. He opened by stating that this novel was a character piece; he had a strong desire to create a piece that only revealed the characters past in the last 100 pages. He said that he found it interesting to explain a characters past after we have got to know the character and his actions.

An interesting discussion that came up was how important it is for a writer to be accurate with details? I believe that Ian McEwan spent 5 years researching the topic of his new novel; Climate Change. Despite this he claimed that he is still expecting complaints from readers of supposed inaccuracies. He used an example of one of his past novels where he placed a character in a car and described the action of them changing gears. From this minor detail he got a letter of complaint stating that his details we're inaccurate and the chosen car would not change gears in this way. He always raised the question: How easy is it for writers to point to facts in novels? Is it indeed risky business.

Despite this Ian McEwan stated that he loves writers who give the taste, feel and look of details. Perphaps this is what has lead to his need to get details correct and spent a long time researching the topic of a novel.

How powerful is poetry? This is a provocative question that a member of the audience and I was curious to know his answer, although I doubt that the answer to this question can ever be given a definitive answer. Ian McEwan doubted that poetry ould make anything happen on a national level, or change an issue such as climate change. But he did seem to point towards poetry having the power to change an individual, not a nation.

Ian McEwan is quite a witty man. Here is a few sound bites from him following his reading:

'If it ended too quickly it's because you're reading too fast.'

' The novel would be dead if women gave up reading.'

'With first person writing you have to do a strange rhetorical trick; it doesn't let you off the hook with writing well.'


If that still hasn't made you feel like reading his books, here's a few words that his audience related to his writing; sinister, 'blokey', sparse and carefully chosen. I wonder what words he would use to describe he own writing?