Nutshell
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3.9 • 75 Ratings
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- £2.99
Publisher Description
**Sunday Times Number One Bestseller**
A classic tale of murder and deceit from one of the world's best storytellers - 'a masterpiece' The Times
Trudy has betrayed her husband, John. She's still in the marital home - a dilapidated, priceless London townhouse - but not with John. Instead, she's with his brother, the profoundly banal Claude, and the two of them have a plan. But there is a witness to their plot: the inquisitive, nine-month-old resident of Trudy's womb.
'An astonishing act of literary ventriloquism unlike any in recent literature. A bravura performance, it is the finest recent work from a true master...' Daily Telegraph
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
A woman plots to kill her husband with the help of her lover. We’ve read stories like this before, but never from the perspective Ian McEwan takes. The action in Nutshell is entirely narrated by the unborn foetus in the woman’s womb, who’s privy to all the deceit and treachery being plotted around it. It’s a gimmick that could be disastrous in less capable hands, but McEwan is a virtuoso. The baby’s musings on life outside the womb are as entertaining as the edge-of-your-seat murder plot…which gives a knowing wink to Hamlet.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
McEwan's latest novel is short, smart, and narrated by an unborn baby. The narrator describes himself upside down in his mother's womb, arms crossed, doing slow motion somersaults, almost full-term, wondering about the future. His mother listens to the radio, audiobooks, and podcasts, so just from listening he has acquired knowledge of current events, music, literature, and history. From experience, he's formed opinions about wine and human behavior. What he's learned of the world has him using his umbilical cord as worry beads, but his greatest concern comes from overhearing his mother and her lover plotting to kill his father. The mother, Trudy, is separated from John, the father. John is overweight, suffers from psoriasis, and, perhaps most annoying for Trudy, loves to recite poetry. Trudy's lover, Claude, is a libidinous real estate developer who covets both John's wife and their highly marketable London home. Claude also happens to be John's brother. Echoes of Hamlet resound in the plans for fratricide, a ghost, and the baby's contemplation of shuffling off his mortal coil. The murder plot structures the novel as a crime caper, McEwan-style that is, laced with linguistic legerdemain, cultural references, and insights into human ingenuity and pettiness. Packed with humor and tinged with suspense, this gem resembles a sonnet the narrator recalls hearing his father recite: brief, dense, bitter, suggestive of unrequited and unmanageable longing, surprising, and surprisingly affecting. 150,000-copy announced first printing.
Customer Reviews
Nutshell
A well written piece with some laugh out loud moments and observations but not in the same league as his earlier works.
The Nutshell, by Ian Macewan
I felt nauseous throughout this short book! The tragic murder story, told from the point of view of a third trimester foetus, is easily recognisable as a modern version of Hamlet. It is set in a foetid, filthy, crumbling London townhouse, infested by rodents and flies, where Trudy and Claud plan the murder of John, husband of Trudy and father of her unborn child. This foetus has a wonderful grasp of modern political and social issues and can tell his Sancerre from his Sauvignon - in fact, I did wonder if he might be at risk of Foetal Alcohol Syndrome because of his mother’s reckless drinking! MacEwan’s dark imagination is nothing new but this book took me by surprise with its dark humour! Having said all that, I finished it in one sitting! I did wonder about the ‘seeming virtuous’ Trudy. To what extent did MacEwan draw on his questions about his own mother, who gave away her baby son, MacEwan’s full brother, at a railway station? Not a comfortable read!
Nutshell
I was a little sceptical at first- However I felt this book was a return to his earlier more creative style