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, all of human endeavour, is just a speck in the universe of possible things.I had heard of Nutshell before I was sent the ARC – knew that it was written from the perspective of a near-term fetus; that he was the unwilling auditory witness to his mother's unsavoury deeds and plans – so I was delighted to get my hands on this book. Yet, as I have had a rather uneven response to author Ian McEwan, the actual enjoyment of this book wasn't a guarantee. So I am happy to report that I loved this little volume: the writing (the big picture and in detail); the humour; the capturing of the zeitgeist; the Shakespearean allusions – absolutely all of it ticked my boxes. Warning: spoilerish beyond, and as I read an ARC, any quotes may not be in their final form.
To begin, the voice of our enwombed narrator is wise and curious – mere weeks after his neural groove closed in upon itself to become his spine and nervous system, what began as his first thought has branched into a web of connections and self-awareness. The reader must accept that, preterm, the son is not only bearing witness to his mother's deeds, but is poised to act as her (hopelessly loving) judge as well. At this stage, the fetus' thoughts are both poetical:
Unless, unless, unless – a wisp of a word, ghostly token of altered fate, bleating little iamb of hope, it drifts across my thoughts like a floater in the vitreous humour of an eye. Mere hope.And blackly humourous:
Not everyone knows what it is to have your father's rival's penis inches from your nose. By this late stage they should be refraining on my behalf. Courtesy, if not clinical judgement, demands it. I close my eyes, I grit my gums, I brace myself against the uterine walls. This turbulence would shake the wings off a Boeing. My mother goads her lover, whips him on with her fairground shrieks. Wall of Death! On each occasion, on every piston stroke, I dread that he'll break through and shaft my soft-boned skull and seed my thoughts with his essence, with the teeming cream of his banality. Then, brain-damaged, I'll think and speak like him. I'll be the son of Claude.And here's the biggest spoiler I'll reveal: it is disclosed early that this rival is his father's brother, Claude, and along with his mother, Trudy, they are plotting to kill the cuckold and sell off the marital home: a crumbling London-based Georgian townhouse that a developer will pay millions for. Aha, thinks I, Claude and Gertrude want to kill the husband and steal his throne. This is Hamlet retold! There are several Hamlet allusions sprinkled throughout the plot: Claude noting that the Russians got away with pouring poison in a victim's ear; the fetus referring to his body as “the mortal coil”; him being transported by Danish takeout: I'm whipped into alertness by a keen essence saltier than blood, by the tang of sea spray off the wide, open ocean road where lonely herring shoals skim northwards through clean black icy water. It's not quite striding the ramparts of Elsinore, but a vision, nonetheless, befitting a Prince of Denmark. (Other Shakespearean references abound, but my favourite was probably when the dim-witted Claude placates Trudy with, “So we'll stick our courage to the screwing whatever”.)
All this is merely a framing device, however, because Nutshell is about so much more. Because our narrator has the insatiable curiosity of a blank slate, he often kicks his mother awake at night so that she'll stick in some earbuds and listen to random podcasts. In this way, he becomes a nonpartisan commentator on the state of our world, and between climate change and terrorists (homegrown and immigrant), the insularity of the EU and the decline of American exceptionalism, with an awareness of safe spaces and trigger words and a generation that insists on not being provoked, despite all those factors that might make the unborn tremble at the thought of entering this imperfect world, our narrator wants his portion of life, demands his three-score-ten to experience whatever comes; even knowing that humanity is probably doomed and that his own mother is plotting a murder most foul. How unlike Hamlet and his brooding soliloquies!
It should be noted that I've read some of the Hogarth Shakespeare Series (for which famous authors were asked to reimagine some of the Bard's plays), and coming as it does at the same time as their release, Nutshell doesn't feel like a coincidence. Was McEwan not asked to participate, yet went ahead anyway? Is this book a poke in the eye to the club that excluded him? T'would be a pity for Hogarth, as so far I'd adjudge Nutshell the best of the lot.
