The Oxford University setting of Naomi Alderman’s novel is familiar, as is the coming of age narrative built around lessons on life, on love and morals, on relations, religious faith, betrayal and pain. Yet, there is something about the way Alderman writes, her use of words in an easy yet evocative, mind-flaring way that compels one to read on.

The Lessons is the story of a group of young undergraduates at Oxford with the narrator, goodlooking middle-class James Stieff at the centre of the story along with Mark Winters, a wealthy, flamboyant, promiscuous and troubled young man who draws a set of friends to live in his inherited 42-room Annulet House.
James reaches Oxford with the usual dreams. “Oxford was a tree decked with presents; all I had to do was reach out my hand and pluck them. I would achieve a first, I would gain a blue, I would make rich, influential, powerful friends. Oxford would paint me with a thin layer of gold”.
But that’s not to be. The Lessons has a simple beginning as James finds himself struggling with his academics despite being a topper at school. To accept being average, normal, is a humiliation which leads to gradual withdrawal and an accident that sets him even further back.
But there is redemption, but also the route to disaster and disillusion in the form of Jess, the angelic, unflappable musician, who picks up the good-looking James and introduces him to Mark and the rest of the gang.
James and Jess move in to Annulet House along with Alderman’s other characters — Franny, the intellectual, bright spark Jewish girl who struggles to come to terms with her orthodox religion; the ambitious Simon who takes up as we say in India, a “suited-booted” job in the City and is on track to become a politician before the book ends; Emmanuella, the attractive Italian, who seems more a prop, though a vital one, than a fleshed-out character.
Mark is the fulcrum of the novel. A homosexual and a catholic, Mark indulges in drugs as well as casual sex and is generous to a fault. Life for the group of friends is one long round of partying, drinking, drugging, shagging. Most of the wining and dining is underwritten by Mark’s trust fund. But the omnipresent workload, the academic striving, the competition keeps popping in. James’ sister Anne, an Oxford alumni, has a one-liner for it: “Oxford is a race”.
A struggling James gets past the endline and goes on to a life in London with Jess. The others, too, move on, in a way, except Mark. On their last day together at Annulet House, Mark jokingly suggests to James that they do hara-kiri in the kitchen. When James asks why, Mark says, “Because our lives are over James. This is it. The end. We will never have a time like this again”. When James suggests that there may be other, different, wonderful times, Mark says with finality, “I feel sure, completely sure, that I’ll never really be myself again. Not after this. This was it for me. I’ve had my golden time. All the rest will be silver and brass”.
For Mark, most of all, the three years of “framily” life in Annulet House is a high point after a lonely, troubled childhood and an adolescence spent with a flamboyant Italian mother. There are hints of a difficult relationship between the two and mysterious allusions to a breakdown.
Mark holds the story together. He symbolises the corrupting influence of wealth and, at the same time, is its victim. At a simple level, one could say that Mark and his lifestyle corrupt the innocent James, but, more positively, one could also say Mark pushes James to search for his true desires, though he does seem somewhat confused right till the end.
The other element explored is Mark’s tangled relation with Catholicism and the tension between sexual proclivities and religious faith. Mark is devout in a way that leads him to believe that life without pain has no meaning. It also allows him to routinely confess his sins and make new beginnings, specially in the context of his homosexual activities. Yet at the same time, Mark seems to search for redemption, leading to a wedding with Simon’s teenaged sister Nicola and the tragic events that follow.
There’s a spin in James’ relationship with Mark which is central to the novel, but I would rather not be a reviewer who takes all the mystery out of a story.
The Lessons is a finely written book, but rather dark with its self-destructive characters — perhaps not everyone’s cup of tea. It explores with skill the complexities of modern relationships, between parent and child, friends and lovers.
There are shades of Evelyn Waugh’s classic Brideshead Revisited in The Lessons, but the idiom, the setting, the characters, the issues are very today.
Alderman has a rather interesting interview with an imagined hostile reader of The Lessons on her blog. The reader asks: “Why on earth would anyone want to read a novel about a bunch of over-privileged over-educated youths drinking and taking drugs?”
Alderman’s reply: “Hey, it’s the kind of novel ‘I’ like to read! But there are plenty of novels out there. If books about different kinds of people to this float your boat, go for it. No novel is ever going to please everyone”.

Sunrita Sen is a freelance journalist. She can be contacted at sunrita@gmail.com