Pratt Page-Turners Book Club

About this event

Please join us for a discussion of What We Can Know by Ian McEwan.

This program has a hybrid format. Participate either in person or on Zoom.

2014: At a dinner for close friends and colleagues, renowned poet Francis Blundy honors his wife’s birthday by reading aloud a new poem dedicated to her, "A Corona for Vivien." Little does anyone gathered around the candlelit table know that for generations to come, people will speculate about the message of this poem, a copy of which has never been found, and which remains an enduring mystery.

2119: Just over one hundred years in the future, much of the western world has been submerged by rising seas following a catastrophic nuclear accident. Those who survive are haunted by the richness of the world that has been lost. In the waterlogged south of what used to be England, Thomas Metcalfe, a lonely scholar and researcher, longs for the early twenty-first century as he chases the ghost of one poem, "A Corona for Vivian." When he stumbles across a clue that may lead to the elusive poem’s discovery, a story is revealed that destroys his assumptions about people he thought he knew intimately well.

What We Can Know is a masterpiece, a love story about both people and the words they leave behind, a literary detective story that reclaims the present from our sense of looming catastrophe and imagines a future world where all is not quite lost.

For help obtaining a copy of the book or more information about the book club, please email fic@prattlibrary.org .

Free parking validation stickers will be available to program attendees who park at the Franklin Street Garage (15 W. Franklin Street) while supplies last. Take a ticket when you enter the garage, and ask Pratt event staff for your parking validation sticker prior to or after the program.