Book Review: Nutshell by Ian McEwan

Nutshell by Ian McEwan
Publisher: Anchor
Paperback Release Date: May 30, 2017
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

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.

When I heard that the narrator of Nutshell was an unborn fetus, I had to read it. The fetus is quite an erudite little fellow, having absorbed much knowledge from the podcasts his mother listens to. Accordingly, his first person voice is mature, it’s not like reading someone talking in baby talk.

The fetus is almost full-term when he figures out that his mother and uncle are having an affair and are planning to kill his father. He loves his mother but his loves father as well. He must try and find a way to put a stop to his mother and uncle’s plot. But how can he do that from inside his mother’s belly?

This is a very short book so it’s hard to say more about it without giving anything away. It’s definitely worth the read to see how the author accomplishes the unusual concept of a book told from a fetus’s point of view. Recommended.