Nutshell by Ian McEwan Review

strictly biographical, the tiny unborn “an unknown quantity” , “not even young … not even yesterday.” But he is also committed to a “free spirit,” influenced by any belief, nothing and no one. His morality is integer, fully developed his intelligence, his education universal, his ability to express full of spirit, his senses (except optical) wide awake. So the lad sucks, describes and comments perceptive, inquisitive and with wit, what it perceives. Attention it listens to the conversations, the music, the audio books and sophisticated radio reports that estimates his mother, and in the evening it enjoys quite “connoisseur” now, “how glorious a decanted through the placenta Burgundy tastes”.

Even though the days of frolic and tumble hitting are over, the little body is stuck now and some shocks his “brand new skull dangerously close to coming,” could the fetus it is the remaining few days can go well in his stimulating habitat – would his closest caregivers not “terrible plan,” which can not simply accept a morally intact mind.

the next is the baby his producer, John Cairncross. But that is a too complacent type, devoid of any greed, one who wants to please everyone, disfigured as unsuccessful as a poet and to make matters worse by worse psoriasis as publishing director. Mama Trudy has put him out because she wants to get a break. To reclaim its rightful place, it lacks the quiet poet of energy and adequate strategies. The lyrical praise of Trudy’s lips, hair and eyes (in fact not as green as “Galway meadows”) let the sung untouched and bored, as the little people registered their organs in her uterus to her flagging heartbeat and the sluggish gurgle.

Even before the first perception of the little being his mother was her brother Claude passionate expire. Now the lover, boss, has taken root a not very profitable construction company with her. But the irreverent observer from the inner world can not find a good word for him. Physically a “showpiece”, the man “who leads a tool to gross deception, Trudy duped while simultaneously forging with their plans.” Or makes a different interpretation better what constitutes the “weak-headed dolt”? “The poodle has no core, Claude is as a conspirator as honest as Trudy, only dumber.” Anyway, the world is the two cold, dominated by selfishness and greed, which drives them to John to poison.

By the unborn planning involuntarily listen must, he learns that it is also about its own future is ordered not rosy. The unscrupulous Mama says two of a Life, “the baby we bring somewhere below”. A life as an adopted child with “computer games instead of books, with sugar, fat and physical violence”? As “miserable three-year-old with crew cut, potbelly and camouflage pants”? The father killed the mother (if you go wrong plan) for life in prison? The question about “To be or not to be” driving around the small Hamlet. Let him the terrifying world without love, respect, common sense and decency refuse not better not to take the “mindless exercise in the yard of existence” only looking for a way out in the “death”? All this promises to “end badly” …