Classic murder story assumes fetal position
Book is funny, bit of a lark, but intellectual and wise at same time, writes Tracy Sherlock.
Ian McEwan is a master storyteller — he makes readers laugh, he makes them cry and he makes them wonder. This time, in Nutshell, he appears to be writing for the sheer challenging fun of it, and in so doing, gives readers a terrific good time as well.
This classic murder story is told from the perspective of an unborn baby, who has witnessed the plot unfold from inside mom’s belly. Trudy, the baby’s mother, is sleeping with the brother of the baby’s father. The baby’s father, John, is a woebegone publisher of poetry. His brother, Claude, makes his money through property development.
Trudy is still living in John’s ancestral home, which, even though it has gone to ruin, is a London townhouse valued at seven million pounds. Claude and Trudy plot to kill John so she inherits the townhouse, which they plan to sell. Claude’s already fielding offers. The villains plan to live at Claude’s equally valuable home once John is out of the picture. Oh — and the baby, whose arrival is imminent, will be “placed somewhere.”
That sets up the story, all told from the perspective of the unborn baby, who for his age is extremely advanced. He muses on the state of the world, the nature of psychopaths, the corruption of capitalism, all of which he has picked up from listening to podcasts with his mother. The baby has been known to give his mother a good kick to wake her up, just so she will turn on a podcast to fall back asleep. The baby is, sadly, a bit of a wine con- noisseur due to his mother’s tendency to enjoy a few glasses on the not-so-rare occasion. The baby is not a fan of Claude, and most especially not of Claude’s amorous attentions toward his mother.
“But oh, a joyous, blushful Pinot Noir, or a gooseberried Sauvignon, sets me turning and tumbling across my secret sea, reeling off the walls of my castle, the bouncy castle that is my home. Or so it did when I had more space,” McEwan writes in the unborn baby’s voice.
Later, when describing Claude: “To be this insipid is hardly plau- sible. Someone clever and dark and calculating is hiding in there. As a man, he’s a piece of work, a self-constructed device, a tool for hard deception, scheming against Trudy even as he schemes beside her.”
To me, the reader, it seems as though McEwan gave himself an idea — write a book from a fetus’ perspective — and decided to set it up as a classic tale of a lover’s betrayal. I’m not complaining. He does a marvellous job with this idea and I’d say he had a few laughs writing this book. It’s funny and a bit of a lark, but wise and intellectual at the same time.
Nutshell is distinctively McEwan. Although all of the action takes place either in the baby’s head or as overheard by the baby, it is full of details, wry observations and ironic twists and turns.