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A review by katykelly
Nutshell by Ian McEwan
5.0
Quite a read, when pregnant! I'm now wondering just what my unborn child can hear...
The narrator of this story is a rather unusual one. He spends the entirety of the book in his mother's womb, growing and listening, telling us the story of what is going on just centimetres from his listening ears.
And it's a corker of a family plot, could be a Hitchcock play (if someone could work out how to stage a 'womb'!).
The baby (we never do of course, know his name), is nearing full term, and has been sentient for quite a while, learning about the world through his mother's conversations, through her audiobooks and television habits, amassing quite an impressive collection of Shakespeare quotations and facts about the outside world.
He is also well aware of his mother's affair. With her brother in law - his own uncle (shades of Hamlet here). And he is also horrified to hear of their plotting to kill his own father...
We 'see' this through the womb, our own eyes and ears discover only what the baby knows, with his filters and opinions.
He's a bright one though, he makes a very verbose (and mature!) teller of tales with a sense of morality and love.
Some scenes are uncomfortable - experiencing sex INSIDE the womb. And it gets tense as the lovers' plan to poison the father comes to a head - will it go ahead?
McEwan is an excellent writer and excels himself here with a very readable (and short) novel that isn't too literary and highbrow, contains some very dark humour and themes (just what will happen to this baby when he's born?!), and a most unusual plot.
It ends on a rather open note and I wanted just a few more pages to see just where this baby will be. But it wasn't 'to be'.
Clever. Possibly not a good idea to read while pregnant! Though I do wonder if a foetus can 'hear' what a mother listens to through earphones!
A good choice for a book group discussion.
The narrator of this story is a rather unusual one. He spends the entirety of the book in his mother's womb, growing and listening, telling us the story of what is going on just centimetres from his listening ears.
And it's a corker of a family plot, could be a Hitchcock play (if someone could work out how to stage a 'womb'!).
The baby (we never do of course, know his name), is nearing full term, and has been sentient for quite a while, learning about the world through his mother's conversations, through her audiobooks and television habits, amassing quite an impressive collection of Shakespeare quotations and facts about the outside world.
He is also well aware of his mother's affair. With her brother in law - his own uncle (shades of Hamlet here). And he is also horrified to hear of their plotting to kill his own father...
We 'see' this through the womb, our own eyes and ears discover only what the baby knows, with his filters and opinions.
He's a bright one though, he makes a very verbose (and mature!) teller of tales with a sense of morality and love.
Some scenes are uncomfortable - experiencing sex INSIDE the womb. And it gets tense as the lovers' plan to poison the father comes to a head - will it go ahead?
McEwan is an excellent writer and excels himself here with a very readable (and short) novel that isn't too literary and highbrow, contains some very dark humour and themes (just what will happen to this baby when he's born?!), and a most unusual plot.
It ends on a rather open note and I wanted just a few more pages to see just where this baby will be. But it wasn't 'to be'.
Clever. Possibly not a good idea to read while pregnant! Though I do wonder if a foetus can 'hear' what a mother listens to through earphones!
A good choice for a book group discussion.