Nutshell: A Novel

"God said, Let there be pain. And there was poetry. Eventually."- from NutshellAnd eventually, luckily for us, there was Ian McEwan, a writer who routinely delivers such lyrical prose that a dedicated reader could weep for pure joy. In Nutshell, he's done it again.How can one adequately describe this weird and wonderful little novel? The plot is based on Shakespeare's Hamlet, but our narrator is an eighth-month fetus, preternaturally aware and attuned to the ways of the world. He resides "upside down in a woman" and is privy to all that the woman is privy to, including the plot devised by her and her lover (her brother-in-law) to kill her husband, our narrator's father. McEwan's tale is essentially a two-hundred page soliloquy by that fetus as he watches in horror as their plan proceeds. It is absurd but dazzlingly imaginative and clever and somehow manages to be both suspenseful and profound. It is philosophical in range, in its view of a world that the narrator has not yet entered but imagines all too perfectly; it is a comedy that is marked by moments of tragedy.To be bound in a nutshell, see the world in two inches of ivory, in a grain of sand. Why not, when all of literature, all of art, of human endeavor, is just a speck in the universe of possible things.Thus speaks our narrator/fetus/philosopher.Our narrator reveals himself to be as much of a ham as a Hamlet. He has developed a well-informed taste for wine and a worldly grasp of current events gained through attentive listening to the educational podcasts preferred by his mother for her insomniac amusement. When he is bored at night, he kicks his mother awake so she will entertain him.He recoils in horror at the active sex life pursued by his mother in her advanced state of pregnancy and cringes at the assault of her lover's penis pounding close by his soft skull.He worries about what will happen to him if their murder plans succeed. Will his mother wind up in prison and will he be born there? Or even if her culpability is not discovered, will she give him up to some foster home or orphanage in order to pursue an unfettered life? The plans he hears her discussing certainly don't seem to include a baby.In despair at his impotence, he considers suicide by strangling himself on his own umbilical cord. ("To be, or not to be...") But there, he realizes, is the rub.Pessimism is too easy, even delicious, the badge and plume of intellectuals everywhere. It absolves the thinking classes of solutions. We excite ourselves with dark thoughts in plays, poems, novels, movies.Every sentence of this short novel seems burnished to perfection. For example, the precocious fetus describes his uncle Claude, the murder conspirator, as a man "whose impoverished sentences die like motherless chicks, cheaply fading." Cheaply fading - one understands Claude completely in that phrase. And did I mention that the fetus' father is a poet and publisher of poets, a purveyor of rich and meaningful sentences?McEwan has shown a preference for short novels. The last one of his that I read was The Children Act, another brief and well-polished gem. One gets the impression that he is not willing to accept anything else than perfection in his prose and so he whittles everything down to the essentials. This might not be everyone's cup of tea, but for those of us who find brevity to be the soul of wit and who enjoy a bit of philosophy with our fiction, it is hot and tasty and just right.There is so much insight contained in this short book. The narrator describes a world where poverty and war, "with climate change held in reserve," is driving millions from their homes, vast movements of angry or desolate or hopeful people, "crammed at borders against the razor-wire gates, drowning in thousands to share in the fortunes of the West." His description of faith-based violence and the inanity of identity politics seems a perfect diagnosis of much of what ails modern society.In this 400th anniversary year of Shakespeare's death, there have been a plethora of rewrites of his plots and themes. A number of them have been successful, some less so. None of them - at least of the ones that I've read - have attained the conspicuous brilliance of McEwan's effort and his beautiful prose. It is a unique bravura performance.

This novel is narrated by a foetus, but not just any foetus: he will be Hamlet when he emerges, having engineered the arrest of his mother Trudy and her cloddish lover Claude for the murder of his admirable father. He knows what's going on because he's old enough to hear conversations near him and to listen to the interminable pod casts with which his mother puts herself to sleep. McEwan maintains the fiction with prodigious consistency, and many readers have found the book to be funny.There is a sly wit at work here, but to me it is fueled by white-hot rage at the degeneracy of modern society (some of which I admit that I share)--with a soupcon of disgust at the bodily functions of females. I'm reminded of Jonathan Swift's disillusioned view of Celia at her dressing table: yes indeed, she s--ts!Readers who share McEwan's predilections will not be put off by the novel's elitism, with all its unattributed quotes from Shakespeare's play (his name is neve mentioned), not to mention the central conceit embodied in the characters' names. If you have never read and re-read the play Hamlet, well, you don't deserve to understand!Please note, I have called this novel a tour de force, and in spite of my distaste for the qualities I have mentioned, I acknowledge its brilliance and I think it would be a very instructive read for any would-be fiction writer, just to see how it's done. For me, well, mercifully, it's short.

_Nutshell_ is short, smart and fast suspense novel, very different from _Atonement_, but with the same careful construction and gifted writing. But while in _Atonement_ it takes maybe half the book to know where McEwan is actually going on with the story, _Nutshell_ immediately hooks you: there is something very nasty and ugly going on here. Granted, a lot of poetic liberties are taken in the book for the plot to work (and no irony that two of the characters are indeed poets, one of them an "owl poet"), but all is admissible if you think that the whole story is narrated by someone who is still in the belly of his mother and constantly under the influence of alcohol. Boy, how these guys drink! And all the wines mentioned in the book are well-ranked on Vivino!The image of the mother's belly as a prison where you can't really say what is happening outside made me think of _Oxygen_, the Netflix feature film. But imho, that is not the best part of the whole idea of this book.What is really nice is how it gradually evolves (or decays) and how the characters become increasingly tense and nervous with their own mistakes (or accomplishments). If you think this is Bruce Willis doing the baby's voice in a light comedy like _Look Who's Talking_, think twice. The last of the three acts in _Nutshell_ is nothing but a tense and extremely well-performed thriller that grabs you and doesn't let you go. This is a book to read maybe in one or two chunks, a real page turner.

Or a Scot in Dane’s Clothing.I once read a review of a Tom Stoppard play, Hapgood, I think it was, which suggested that Stoppard’s genius was in making his audience feel more intelligent. I got the same sort of feeling with Nutshell, as Ian McEwan plays with his reader’s knowledge of Shakespeare. Or to put it another way, this is a highbrow (or even middlebrow) version of 1066 and All That, all those dimly remembered bits of Shakespeare.Much I had heard about Nutshell before reading it suggested that it is a retelling of Hamlet. Well yes it is to an extent, but firstly it is more of prequel, and secondly the characters and the imagery are frequently closer to the Scottish Play.In this world, the state of Denmark (or Scotland) is a slightly tired but still valuable townhouse in London. (Ger)Trudy has thrown out her husband, poet and publisher, John Cairncross out of the home inherited from his family. She has replaced him with his shallower brother, property developer Claude (ius). The two of them are plotting to murder the unfortunate writer in order to realise the value of this particular property. Their machinations (and copulations) are observed by John and Trudy’s unborn baby.McEwan then liberally sprinkles this set up with references to both Danish and Scottish plays. Trudy cuts her foot and worries about how difficult it is to clean up the blood. Claude having chosen a poison, wonders if he should have used one about which he read, which can be poured into the victim’s ear. Trudy drives Claude toward murder, and in the immediate aftermath is the more practical, but then quickly becomes the more regretful, to the point where Claude cares little for her. John’s ghost appears, a cross between Hamlet’s father and Banquo at the feast.This is a slight book, little more than a novella, but it is extremely intense, and Mcewan’s writing style is that of a virtuoso, revelling in complex vocabulary. The first chapter is one of the most stunningly beautiful pieces of writing I have read for some time, but then I found it difficult to progress. That wasn’t because of anything wrong with the story or style, other than its being so dense and intricate. I found it quite it quite tiring, or perhaps a better description might be extremely rich. I wanted to digest one chapter fully before moving onto the next. That said, as things move toward the crime and its aftermath, the pace picks up as it turns from a piece of angsty middle class literary fiction into an out and out thriller.I suspect that this will be a book which generates pretty binary reactions. A couple of times, I did wonder if it might become irritating, a bit too clever for its own good. I could certainly sympathise with those how might react badly to it. However, in the end, it won me over. It is a surprising, intelligent and entertaining book with a unique and engaging narrative voice. While being set in a very familiar middle class London, it avoids the suffocating smugness of Saturday.Well worth investing your time and a few of your English pounds.

Ian McEwan is well-known for his tales of suspense with artful twists, so this bitterly funny novella comes as quite a pleasant surprise. The narrator is a preternaturally aware foetus who bears witness to the misdemeanours of his mother, Trudy, and her good friend Claude, with a keen ear, despite not being able to actually see what’s going on, encased inconveniently as he is within his amniotic sac.He struggles with his contrary feelings of love and hate for his mother, as it becomes clear that he is tasked to play the part of Hamlet in this increasingly dangerous bedroom farce, with adultery and even murder on the cards. And led as he is unwillingly into this plot, he feels powerless to act (and not entirely for altruistic ends), but that may soon change with what he thinks could be a contribution on his part.That McEwan gives a foetus such a prime role and such character is already quite a feat, but to add to that the foetus’s sophisticated sommelier taste for his mother’s choice of wine which potentially endangers his own development, and his mortal fear for his own safety whenever his mother gets amorous, tip the scale and make this piece into a full out satirical comedy, which is riotously funny. As always, McEwan’s exacting prose is a joy to read, and I would say this is one of his more successful pieces in recent memory.

The reviews on this book were good and the preposition that an unborn baby could hear conversations from inside the womb believable...... that is until you start reading!! I'm happy with the context that s/he can hear sounds and even voices, but it's too much of a stretch to believe that s/he can understand, reason, deduct, "see" colour, or have any concept about the height of an adult, what is constitutes a beautiful face etc etc etc. Have to admit that I lost patience with it about three quarters of the way through and skipped to the end, which was equally unbelievable, even although the outcome was satisfying.

It's so annoying when people write that a book like this is 'unbelievable'.OF COURSE IT'S UNBELIEVABLE!But the book/baby is a vehicle that carries the reader on a reflective journey withaccurate summaries of world issues, a growing sense of fear and desperation, sexual encounters (devoid of love) and delightful imagery (the baby's sensations and conjured hopes).Thought-provking for a thinking reader. For the sensitive and empathetic, this book will remain with you for quite a while.

It took me a couple of chapters, but this highly original and very unusual story hooked me in and never let go. To make the point of view an unborn baby was ambitious but, thanks to a first class mind and great imagination, it works. McEwan is a very gifted storyteller and writer and I've yet to read a book by him that has failed to disappoint. Nutshell is unpredictable, shocking, funny and gripping.