“Exercises” is an emotional psychological drama for leisurely reading with elements of the biography of the author himself, structurally reminiscent of scattered pieces of a mosaic. In the mid-twentieth century, when the world is still counting the cost of World War II, the life of eleven-year-old Roland Baines is turned upside down. The military takes him away from Libya and places him in an English boarding school, where his vulnerability attracts a young piano teacher, Miriam Cornell. An irrational and tragic first love will run like a red thread through the boy’s entire life. Much later, when Roland’s wife disappears, leaving him alone with his young son, he will look for answers both in his youth and in the history of his family. Ian McEwan chronicles the turning points in history of Europe from the 20th to the 21st centuries through the prism of the life of Roland, a typical representative of his generation.