Tale from the womb: Ian McEwan's Nutshell

It isn't quite what you expect it to be. Ian McEwan's 17th novel is a tightly wound drama of deceit, lust and murder, even Shakespearean to begin with, introducing a new retelling of the ever-wrought Hamlet set in a contemporary time.

"So here I am upside down in a woman," the story opens. There is life, but it's inchoate. The novel is quick to reveal its conceit.

There is to be a death, a cold-blooded one at that. The unborn child safe (but for how long, unsure) within the womb is painfully privy to the world outside of his translucent body bag. He listens to everything (including long podcasts).

He has thoughts and prescient concerns too. This might seem "David-Copperfield-kind-of-bullshit" at first, but it's sublime the moment it seizes you, all the while dripping with cruel irony.

The woman he resides in is Trudy. She is cheating on his father, John, with a man named, Claude. Claude, he learns, is Trudy's brother-in-law. His uncle. All this much to the chagrin of the unborn child!

John Cairncross is an unrecognised poet and an impoverished owner of a publishing house. His marriage, just like his finances, is in ruins. He is no longer living with Trudy; she has pushed him out and is occupying his London home.

Claude, on the other hand, is a real estate developer; he's boring but rich. "Who washes his private parts at the basin where my mother washes her face," the loquacious narrator, the foetus with the unscrupulous eye for the exalting and incriminating, tells us. And then a bit later on: "Not everyone knows what it is to have your father's rival's penis inches from your face."

Trudy is beautiful with golden braids. Why she chooses Claude over John is perhaps more telling about her.

What's more pressing, which is gradually relayed, is that she and Claude are plotting to poison John. Sensing this impending doom, the unborn has cottoned on to the deviousness.

As short biting stories go, to this reader, Nutshell is more reminiscent of McEwan's earlier works The Comfort of Strangers (1981), about an English couple on a holiday in a European city, befriended by a native Robert, who courts them into misery; or On Chesil Beach (2007), a masterpiece which went on to win the Booker, set in the course of one evening during a couple's honeymoon when they rudely confront the contrasting backgrounds of each other's lives, which renders an irreparable bearing on their relationship.

Here too an exhibition of McEwan's stunning storytelling is at play. He takes an otherwise seemingly concise premise to the hilt with rich wordplay, stylised prose and an intricate excavation of existential craving, and trappings of love and imagination.

Moreover, he is able to deftly justify why the narrative must not remain constricted in his views in utero.

"Certain artists in print or paint flourish, like babies-to-be, in confined spaces. Their narrow subjects may confound or disappoint some… To be bound in a nutshell, see the world in two inches of ivory, in a grain of sand, why not, when all of literature, all of art, of human endeavour, is just a speck in the universe of possible things. And even this universe is maybe a speck in a multitude of actual and possible universes."

The overindulgence in these lines also almost obfuscates whether the ultimate driver of the overarching narrative is less than a three-weeks-to-go-before-he's-a-child or a seasoned writer filling in the blank spaces to confound and disappoint.

Sadly, it is not to shock and awe. Nutshell's ultimate weakness lies in its all-too cleverness to keep the characters devoid of depth. They are petty, naïve and greedy even with each other. Everyone is a loser. It takes a certain brilliance to pull this all off.

(Courtesy of Mail Today.)

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