Nutshell by Ian McEwan is a unique and inventive retelling of Hamlet from the perspective of an unborn child. The story follows a woman, Trudy, and her lover, Claude, as they plot to murder her husband, John. The narrative is humorous and heartbreaking, with the unborn child trying to navigate his loyalty between his parents while contemplating how to prevent the impending tragedy. The book is a blend of wit, humor, and suspense, all wrapped in McEwan's signature prose style.
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Sensitive Topics/Content Warnings
Content warnings for the book include themes of murder, infidelity, and discussions around abortion.
From The Publisher:
A New York Times and Washington Post Notable Book
One of the Best Books of the Year: San Francisco Chronicle, NPR, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Oprah.com
Trudy has been unfaithful to her husband, John. What's more, she has kicked him out of their marital home, a valuable old London town house, and in his place is his own brother, the profoundly banal Claude. The illicit couple have hatched a scheme to rid themselves of her inconvenient husband forever. But there is a witness to their plot: the inquisitive, nine-month-old resident of Trudy's womb.
As Trudy's unborn son listens, bound within her body, to his mother and his uncle's murderous plans, he gives us a truly new perspective on our world, seen from the confines of his. McEwan's brilliant recasting of Shakespeare lends new weight to the age-old question of Hamlet's hesitation, and is a tour de force of storytelling.
Ratings (6)
Incredible (3) | |
Loved It (3) |
Reader Stats (14):
Read It (6) | |
Want To Read (6) | |
Not Interested (2) |
3 comment(s)
I read this back in 2018 and haven't been able to forget it and I decided I definitely needed to reread it today. And what a ride it was. It's was still an intense yet funny read that hooked me in from the start. Loved it more this time around but maybe it's because I regularly think about this book for some reason. Would have wanted to do a re-read of other Ian McEwan books but I don't think I loved them as much of I can remember correctly
what a goddamn charming brilliant hamlet-referencing clever little book
it doesn't have the emotional resonance of
atonement, but the premise alone is so SMART
a foetus witnesses his mother and uncle planning the death of his father, from inside the womb
and this kid is smart, listening through his mother's body and imagining a whole world outside himself, thinking through questions of morality and culpability
he's so smart you lose yourself in the narrative at times, but there is always a thread of emotion that pulls you back in
because no one talks about him, except as a thing (the birth) that's going to happen
he loves his mother, shares everything with her, but is pretty sure she doesn't want to keep him
there's no room for him in the world his mother and uncle are planning
An extraordinary tale from an extraordinary narrator. An eight and half months old baby tells us a story from its mother's womb. A story of rotten relationships, sex, alcohol and murder. As a reader I wondered how can an unborn baby show such an intelligence ! and then I thought who knows, may be it can ! ( But when I finished this book I didn't care)
Trudy, mother of this tiny narrator is plotting a murder of her husband John (who is a poet). She is having an affair with her Brother in law, Claude and they together scheme it all. Money is the motive.
Our little friend from his mother's womb understands it all. He like his father, tells us that he is kind and poetic, an intellectual.
"John Cairncross is different. Here are my reasonable inferences. Born under an obliging star,eager to please, too kind, too earnest, he has nothing of the ambitious poet's quiet greed."
Where as he loathes his uncle Claude and thinks he is stupid.
"How stupid is Claude really?"
"Claude doesn't know he's stupid.If you are stupid, How can you tell?..."
Our tiny narrator loves his mother but at times seeing her cruelty towards his father, starts to hate her and then again loves her. He also has a sense of responsibility where he is supposed to unite his parents. He has a taste for different wines (also knowledge!) too.
McEvan has put forth a unbelievable saga, a modern Hamlet, through a clever unborn baby. A clever person who knows poetry, has a love for his mother's podcasts and makes clever observations like-
"We'll always be troubled by how things are- that's how it stands with the difficult gift of consciousness."
"But here's life 's most limiting truth-it's always now,always here, never then and there."
“However close you get to others, you can never get inside them, even when you’re inside them.”
Beautiful words and great thoughts to tickle your mind.
ARC from NetGalley
What can you read after
Nutshell?
About the Author:
Ian McEwan is the bestselling author of seventeen books, including the novels Nutshell; The Children Act; Sweet Tooth; Solar, winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize; Saturday; Atonement, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the W. H. Smith Literary Award; The Comfort of Strangers and Black…
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