The Nutshell, book review. (Ian McEwan)

If you think a story told in the first person by an as yet unborn foetus, silly, ridiculous or just plain weird, I am not going to try and change your opinion, but I will encourage you to read it all the same.

Told over the course of a few days, with some flashbacks thrown in for good measure and told from the confines of his mother’s belly, it is her son-to-be that hears about his father’s intended murder, her collusion with his uncle to sell their house and start afresh, and he hears his dad too, when he pops in and pledges his love for his wife, sharing his hopes and dreams for the future - returning to the marital home that was his grandfather’s and father’s before him being just one of them (the house is worth several million pounds and is very much part of the uncle’s plan when it comes to murdering the brother) – but our storyteller also notices the lack of discussion about him, about baby, and although not born yet, it’s a worry!

When his uncle does finally mentions him, whilst getting drunk with his mum - the alcohol being most welcome - the conversation doesn’t sound so good. They talk about selling the house and passing him on, separating him from his mother, a mother he loves at times, particularly when the food and drink are good, and loathes at others, when she talks about killing his father and abandoning him.

Like many of McEwan's books, (I’ve yet to read them all) the writing here is pure prose, but I think this one would have worked better if the writing had been toned down a bit, to fit with the narrator’s unusual situation.

What I did like was the baby’s interaction with mum when she ate and drank. His thoughts behind trying to prevent his father’s demise, how he intended to stop his mum and uncle doing a runner before the police turned up, his failures and his successes.

When mum eats well, he feels it, when she drinks too much, he feels that too and when he hears his mum and dad argue, his uncle plotting, he decides there has to be a way he can intervene, but tying his cord up doesn’t work, his fingernails are too soft to tear that membrane and not only is time running out but space is too.

Three and a half stars for this one methinks as it was a good attempt at something I haven’t heard being done before and has the usual McEwan beauty to the writing - if you like that sort of thing.