Description
Book SynopsisTrudy has betrayed her husband, John. She's still in the marital home – a dilapidated, priceless London townhouse – but not with John. Instead, she's with his brother, the profoundly banal Claude, and the two of them have a plan. But there is a witness to their plot: the inquisitive, nine-month-old resident of Trudy's womb.
Told from a perspective unlike any other, Nutshell is a classic tale of murder and deceit from one of the world’s master storytellers.
Trade ReviewAn astonishing act of literary ventriloquism unlike any in recent literature. A bravura performance, it is the finest recent work from a true master… Told from a perspective unlike any other, Nutshell is a shocking tale of murder and treachery from
one of the world’s master storytellers. * Daily Telegraph *
A creative gamble that pays off brilliantly…Witty and gently tragic, this short, bewitching novel is an ode to humanity’s beauty, selfishness and inextinguishable longing. -- Hephzibah Anderson * Mail on Sunday *
Ian McEwan’s embryonic spin on Hamlet is
a virtuoso feat of wordplay … Virtuoso entertainment. -- Tim Adams * Observer *
While the literary device of an unborn baby narrating a novel from the womb is hardly original… Ian McEwan employs it with aplomb... Here everything is tightly controlled and the tension ratchets up as our all-knowing unborn watches helplessly from his watery sack while the dastardly plan progresses through a series of nail-biting moments… The ending is beautifully contrived…
The book is elegantly written with plenty of pungent, topical observations upon the world. -- John Harding * Daily Mail *
At once playful and deadly serious, delightful and frustrating it is
one of McEwan’s hardest to categorise works, and all the more interesting for it. -- Robert Douglas-Fairhurst * The Times *
