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Ian McEwan : Nutshell: A Novel before purchasing it in order to gage whether or not it would be worth my time, and all praised Nutshell: A Novel:

88 of 97 people found the following review helpful. Tales from the unbornBy TChrisThe only likable character in Nutshell is a fetus. Fortunately, hersquo;s an exceptionally bright fetus with a rich vocabulary. His mother and father separated after his conception. His father, a poet, has a relationship of some sort with a student. His mother is sleeping with his fatherrsquo;s brother. His mother and brother have a murderous intent, which provides Nutshellrsquo;s plot.In prose that celebrates the richness of the English language, Ian McEwan tells the story from the unborn childrsquo;s point of view. The narrator has traditional notions of how parents should behave and is distressed that his own are not up to the task, but while residing in his motherrsquo;s womb, he cannot help but love her. Unfortunately for him, occasional kicks when his mother is misbehaving are an ineffective method of influencing her behavior. Yet even a fetus is not without resources.As always, McEwanrsquo;s prose is a treat to be savored. Nutshell also showcases his wit. The narrator has extensive insight into the ways of the world, thanks to the knowledge he has absorbed as his mother listens to talk radio and self-improvement tapes. In addition to parenting, the fetal narrator shares his wry opinions about hope and faith and hatred, as well as current events, culture, sex, and the merits of the wines that his mother consumes.An inspector with Columbo-like mannerisms adds to the humor. Nutshell is a short novel, not as substantial or dramatic as most of McEwanrsquo;s other books, but brevity assures that every word counts in a fun novel that works its way to a satisfying conclusion that manages to be both surprising and inevitable.3 of 3 people found the following review helpful. Great writing, novel but unconvincing fetal narratorBy saxplayerUltimately, an untenable premise - although advanced by amazing writing. Kept having intrusive thoughts of baby Stewie from Family Guy.McEwen, able to plumb the deaths of our souls, must have been oddly innocent of this not quite cross cultural parallel.1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. I enjoyed the book very much and have already started passing ...By CAVery interesting book, but I did need to Google some of the words! My lack of knowledge, however, even without looking up certain words did not distract from the story. I enjoyed the book very much and have already started passing it on to friends. Knowledge of Hamlet will be useful to the reader but is not necessary as the story can stand on it's on (except perhaps for the appearance of the ghost). While I can understand McEwan's desire to include the ghost, its appearance seemed awkward and distracted a little from the flow of the story. In my opinion, the ghost should have appeared in a different part of the house.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER #1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLERFrom literary superstar Ian McEwan Ian McEwan comes Nutshell, a gloriously entertaining, wonderfully imagined novelmdash;a mesmerizing thriller to delight all readers. "Oh God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself king of infinite spacemdash;were it not that I have bad dreams." --William Shakespeare's HamletTrudy has betrayed her husband, John, who trusts and adores her. She's living in the marital home--a dilapidated, and priceless London townhouse--but John's not there. In his stead is the profoundly banal Claude--and together they're hatching a murderous plan. But there is an unexpected witness to their plot, who cares deeply about the outcome: the inquisitive nine-month-old inhabitant of Trudy's womb.Told from a perspective unlike any other, Nutshell is riveting--an unforgettably original, wickedly entertaining, novel of murder and deceipt from one of the world's master storytellers. ldquo;Until the exciting day when McEwan . . . is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, his numerous and ardent fans enjoy the regular appearance of his highly intelligent and compellingly provocative novels. McEwan can be counted on to make the implausible plausible and the outrageous reasonable, and his talent in that regard is put to its consummate test in [Nutshell]. Startling at first but quickly acceptable and even embraced, this mesmerizing tale is narrated by an unborn, male fetus. . . . [H]e takes matters into his tiny little hands, which brings this ingenious tour de force to its stunning conclusion.nbsp;As soon as words gets out, any new novel by this bestselling, Booker Prizendash;winning novelist causes a reader frenzy.rdquo; mdash;Booklistnbsp;(starred review)ldquo;Everyone . . . should read Ian McEwanrsquo;s Nutshell. . . . McEwanrsquo;s command of language is just gobsmacking, even in his sixties; the wonder is that he is hilarious as well. He makes aging look brilliant.rdquo; mdash;Ian Brown, author of Sixty, The Globe and Mailldquo;A peculiar and philosophical novel that features what is perhaps the most ingenious literary conceit of the year.rdquo; mdash;The Globe and Mailldquo;McEwanrsquo;s latest novel is short, smart, and narrated by an unborn baby. . . . Echoes ofnbsp;Hamletnbsp;resound in the plans for fratricide, a ghost, and the babyrsquo;s contemplation of shuffling off his mortal coil. The murder plot structures the novel as a crime caper, McEwan-stylemdash;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.rdquo; mdash;Publishers Weeklynbsp;(starred review)ldquo;Ian McEwanrsquo;s delicious new novel, with its foetal narrator, is comedy gold. . . . In Nutshell, McEwan is a pentathlete at the top of his game, doing several very different things equally well. Current literary culture rarely awards gold medals for comedy, but this is one performancemdash;agile, muscular, swiftmdash;you should not miss.rdquo; mdash;The Timesldquo;[T]he familiar story retains a strong forward momentum. . . . [An] elegiac, masterpiece, a calling together of everything McEwan has learned and knows about his art.rdquo; mdash;The Guardianldquo;[A]nbsp;smart, funny and utterly captivating novel. . . . Like his 1998 novel, Amsterdam, Nutshell is a small tour de force that showcases all of Mr. McEwanrsquo;s narrative gifts of precision, authority and control, plus a new, Tom Stoppard-like delight in the sly gymnastics that words can be perform. The restrictions created by the narratorrsquo;s situationmdash;stuck inside a maternal nutshellmdash;seem to have stimulated a surge of inventiveness on Mr. McEwanrsquo;s part . . . [His]little homunculus is, by turns, earnest, mocking, sarcastic, searching and irreverent . . . Itrsquo;s preposterous . . . that a fetus should be thinking such earthshaking thoughts, but Mr. McEwan writes here with such assurance and eacute;lan that the reader never for a moment questions his sleight of hand.rdquo; mdash;Michiko Kakutani, The New York Timesldquo;Nutshell turns out to be a sparkling and gripping tale thanks to a batty conceit that somehow works extremely well. This is McEwan at play, giving us a short, sharp, sophisticated entertainment.rdquo; mdash;Daily Express (four stars)ldquo;At once playful and deadly serious, delightful and frustrating, it is one of McEwanrsquo;s hardest to categorise works, and all the more interesting for it. Giving it the title Nutshell doesnrsquo;t mean it can easily be placed in one.rdquo; mdash;The Timesldquo;In Nutshell, we see a bookish mind at play. And it turns out that a fetal Hamletmdash;bound, watching the inevitable event grow nearer, an extravagant and erring sprit confined in doubts and impotencemdash;is actually just about right. . . . Nutshell is a joy: unexpected, self-aware and pleasantly dense with plays on Shakespeare. It isnrsquo;t Hamlet, and doesnrsquo;t particularly illuminate Hamlet, but dances beautifully with it. . . . For a good adaptation, play is the thing.rdquo; mdash;NPRldquo;[A] compact, captivating new novel. . . . [F]ormidable genius. . . . Is there another writer alive who can pull off a narrative line of this sort? . . . The writing is lean and muscular, often relentlessly gorgeous. . . . The literary acrobatics required to bring such a narrator- in-the-womb to life would be reason enough to admire this novel. But McEwan, aside from being one of the most accomplished craftsmen of plot and prose, also happens to be a deeply provocative writer about science. His musings are often oblique and tangentialmdash;yet he manages to penetrate the spirals of some of the most engaging quandaries in contemporary science. . . . Cognizant readers might recognize in Nutshell the influences of Richard Dawkins (about whose work McEwan has written thoughtfully) or Daniel Dennettmdash;and a good dose of Agatha Christiemdash;but it hardly matters: The pleasures of this tautly plotted book require no required reading.rdquo; mdash;The New York Times Book ldquo;The latest novel from Ian McEwan is like nothing wersquo;ve read before. Nutshell is a gripping domestic drama told from a very unusual perspective: a baby in the womb. Sounds strange, but it works.rdquo; mdash;Good Housekeeping nbsp; ldquo;Ian McEwan had form when it comes to creating arresting first-person narrators, but he excels himself with his latest novel, Nutshell. . . . [T]he conceitrsquo;s an ingenious one, and McEwan carries it off with aplombmdash;it really shouldnrsquo;t work, but it does. . . . [B]rims with life. In a nutshell, shall we say, itrsquo;s a corker.rdquo; mdash;Tatler nbsp; ldquo;Nutshellnbsp;is a classic story of murder and revenge, told in an astonishing act of literary ventriloquism unlike any in recent literature. A bravura performance, it is the finest recent work from a true master.rdquo; mdash;The Guardianldquo;It takes a lionrsquo;s nerve to rewrite Hamlet from the viewpoint of a fetus, a stunt conceived and sweetly achieved by Ian McEwan in his latest novel, Nutshell. McEwanrsquo;s 197-page thimble brims with literary allusions, social commentary and murderous intrigue. . . . McEwan[rsquo;s] prose is always exquisite. . . . His Nutshell is a stunt, but a gorgeous one, studded with Joycean reflections on fathers, the wisdom of pop songs and reviews of placenta-filtered fine wine.rdquo; mdash;The Washington Timesldquo;[D]evilishly clever and darkly humorous. . . . In Nutshell, McEwan cleverly pulls off what might be little more than a gimmick in the hands of a lesser novelist. That he persuades us to suspend our disbelief so readily here is a testament to his consummate skill.rdquo; mdash;BookPageldquo;A sparkling, witty re-imagining of Hamlet starring an unborn baby. . . . As an example of point of view, you can look no farther than these gorgeous pages, which not only prove that brevity is the soul of wit but also offer the reader a voice both distinctive and engaging. . . . Can he [the unborn narrator] warn his father? If too late, can he avenge him? And how? The answers to these questions will keep the reader speeding through every page, each one rife with wordplay, social commentary, hilarity, and suspense. . . . Hats off to Ian McEwan. Irsquo;ve worn my Ticonderoga to a nub drawing a universe of stars in the margins of this charming book.rdquo; mdash;The Boston GlobeAbout the AuthorIAN MCEWAN is the bestselling author of sixteen books, including the novels The Children Act; Sweet Tooth; Solar, winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize; On Chesil Beach; Saturday; Atonement, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the W. H. Smith Literary Award; The Comfort of Strangers and Black Dogs, both short-listed for the Booker Prize; Amsterdam, winner of the Booker Prize; and The Child in Time, winner of the Whitbread Award; as well as the story collections First Love, Last Rites, winner of the Somerset Maugham Award, and In Between the Sheets.Excerpt. copy; Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.So here I am, upside down in a woman. Arms patiently crossed, waiting, waiting and wondering who Irsquo;m in, what Irsquo;m in for. My eyes close nostalgically when I remember how I once drifted in my translucent body bag, floated dreamily in the bubble of my thoughts through my private ocean in slow-motion somersaults, colliding gently against the transparent bounds of my confinement, the confiding membrane that vibrated with, even as it muffled, the voices of conspirators in a vile enterprise. That was in my careless youth. Now, fully inverted, not an inch of space to myself, knees crammed against belly, my thoughts as well as my head are fully engaged. Irsquo;ve no choice, my ear is pressed all day and night against the bloody walls. I listen, make mental notes, and Irsquo;m troubled. Irsquo;m hearing pillow talk of deadly intent and Irsquo;m terrified by what awaits me, by what might draw me in. Irsquo;m immersed in abstractions, and only the proliferating relations between them create the illusion of a known world. When I hear ldquo;blue,rdquo; which Irsquo;ve never seen, I imagine some kind of mental event thatrsquo;s fairly close to ldquo;greenrdquo;mdash;which Irsquo;ve never seen. I count myself an innocent, unburdened by allegiances and obligations, a free spirit, despite my meagre living room. No one to contradict or reprimand me, no name or previous address, no religion, no debts, no enemies. My appointment diary, if it existed, notes only my forthcoming birthday. I am, or I was, despite what the geneticists are now saying, a blank slate. But a slippery, porous slate no schoolshy;room or cottage roof could find use for, a slate that writes upon itself as it grows by the day and becomes less blank. I count myself an innocent, but it seems Irsquo;m party to a plot. My mother, bless her unceasing, loudly squelching heart, seems to be involved. Seems, Mother? No, it is. You are. You are involved. Irsquo;ve known from my beginning. Let me summon it, that moment of creation that arrived with my first concept. Long ago, many weeks ago, my neural groove closed upon itself to become my spine and my many million young neurons, busy as silkworms, spun and wove from their trailing axons the gorgeous golden fabric of my first idea, a notion so simple it partly eludes me now. Was it me? Too self-loving. Was it now? Overly dramatic. Then something antecedent to both, containing both, a single word mediated by a mental sigh or swoon of acceptance, of pure being, something likemdash;this? Too precious. So, getting closer, my idea was To be. Or if not that, its grammatical variant, is. This was my aboriginal notion and herersquo;s the cruxmdash;is. Just that. In the spirit of Es muss sein. The beginning of conscious life was the end of illusion, the illusion of non-being, and the eruption of the real. The triumph of realism over magic, of is over seems. My mother is involved in a plot, and therefore I am too, even if my role might be to foil it. Or if I, reluctant fool, come to term too late, then to avenge it.

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