LITERARY FICTION

NUTSHELL by Ian McEwan (Cape £16.99)

WHILE the literary device of an unborn baby narrating a novel from the womb is hardly original (Thomas Keneally, for one, used it in his novel Passenger nearly 40 years ago), Ian McEwan employs it with aplomb.

Nearing the time for his release from confinement, his foetal protagonist finds himself witness to a plot to murder his father by his mother Trudy and her lover, Claude, her husband’s brother.

The names, of course, are a clue that this is a very alternative Hamlet.

Unlikely plotting is so often the weakness of McEwan’s novels, but 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.

It’s not only his father our unchristened storyteller has to worry about, but also himself, as he learns the conspirators mean to give him away as soon as he’s born and he imagines a miserable future for himself.

The ending is beautifully contrived as our hero realises his uterine state means he is not quite as helpless as a baby. The book is elegantly written with plenty of pungent, topical observations upon the world its narrator will soon be emerging into.