Ian McEwan

Rory Kinnear

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Nutshell

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An 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.

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.

Ian McEwan’s embryonic spin on Hamlet is a virtuoso feat of wordplay … Virtuoso entertainment.

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.

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.

Nutshell is an orb, a Venetian glass paperweight, of a book; a place where, be warned , it puts you in the quoting mood…it is a consciously late, deliberately elegiac , masterpiece, a calling together of everything McEwan has learned and knows about his art.

A very alternative Hamlet… 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 book is elegantly written with plenty of pungent, topical observations upon the world its narrator will soon be emerging into.

One of the most hilariously unlikely narrators in contemporary fiction.

A fast, arch beach read… A psychological thriller with a bad marriage and murder at its centre… McEwan has thrown in Gone Girl intrigue with The Girl on the Train suspense and given us his take on how toxic a marriage can get when spliced with a Shakespearean cast. Who knew McEwan could mix high and low literary genres to create such a bizarrely readable mash-up?

The book’s finest exploration is of poetry. The author offers up everything he knows about its intensity, and why he loves it so. It is clear Mr McEwan has had enormous fun writing Nutshell; now it is the reader’s turn to be entertained too. Dark as it is, this novel is a thing of joy.

McEwan’s latest novel features all his hallmarks: elegant plotting, suspense, good characterisation and a chilling awareness of just how unpleasant people can be… Witty and thoughtful, this short, engaging novel punches well above its weight.

As we read this tight little novel — like a foetus in the womb — grows into something much grander and weightier than itself.

McEwan has always been an artist in the Alfred Hitchcock vein in that what’s most interesting and appealing about his work tends to come from his extreme technical mastery of his medium.

[A] crisp, cool tale [which] contains, in a nutshell, the kernel of Hamlet… The real wonder is that this novel’s deft, light prose and belting pulse-rate can transport all this freight. Every sentence has its ghost, every word its pun. The bard’s wisdom becomes the novelist’s wit… Nutshell is a high-risk, high-wire act, brilliantly executed.

McEwan carries it off with aplomb… [Nutshell] brims with life. In a nutshell, shall we say, it’s a corker.

[It] is like nothing we’ve read before. Nutshell is a gripping domestic drama.

[A] surprising and surprisingly funny novel.

His most intriguing book since [On Chesil Beach].

[Nutshell] in parts is the best of his oeuvre…since Enduring Love… There is a visceral edge and an eldritch stickiness to some of the prose.

McEwan is the nearest thing we have to a “state of (much of) the nation” novelist. He does commentary with a crisp verve.

Nutshell was…a pleasure to read… [It’s] very funny.

McEwan, whose prose is always exquisite, is best known for Amsterdam, Atonement and Saturday. His Nutshell is a stunt, but a gorgeous one, studded with Joycean reflections on fathers, the wisdom of pop songs and reviews of placenta-filtered fine wine.

Perhaps you’ve got to read it to believe it? That’s certainly what I urge. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

Nutshell features the novelist at his best, combining the unsettling morbidity of his early works with the wit and depth of his later publications… It is comforting to know too that McEwan, one of the great writers of his generation, part of the defining clique of his time, continues to carve his talents into jewels 40 years on.

[McEwan] spins this gripping yarn in his usual sublime prose, sprinkled with the blackest of comic relief… The only criticism one could level at this slender beauty is that it’s over all too soon.

This, McEwan’s fourteenth novel, proves once again that he is a writer finely attuned to how the heart beats. He knows how to make his reader feel entertained, happy, and sad, all within twenty pages – an expert in the craft of the sad smile, so to speak… Be assured – you don’t have to be a fan of the play to read this novel; it is a pleasure in its own right.

It has a great concept and a brilliant opening… I love the way the wisecracking narrator…picks up information about the world… It shows what can be done with the form, that there are still new ways to experiment.

Possibly the most unusual crime book of the year. A witty and suspenseful story told from inside a mother's womb.

It's an intriguing set-up, and one that allows McEwan to do what he's good at. The crime is deftly charted, expertly paced. Much of the writing is lean and queasily vivid.

McEwan is even more brilliant when turning his pen to wry humour and satire… An intelligent social satire.

[It’s] incredibly brave and only one of our greatest authors could pull it off. He does, with aplomb. The sheer command of language and confidence with prose is a tutorial for us lesser authors.

This dark, clever tale is among the best of McEwan’s newer novels.

[Nutshell is] hilarious and compelling… [A] ripping, gripping yarn – narrative velcro.

McEwan is on top form… Social satire that wears its learning lightly

[A] brilliant novel… A tour de force in language and literary intrigue.

A book pulsing with hilarious and brainy brio… He simultaneously spoofs crime fiction and finds a novel mouthpiece for a mordantly entertaining and exhilaratingly intelligent commentary on the modern world.

By turns, funny, shocking and compelling. But the writing is so clever and beautiful. I could read it again and again.

The voice of its narrator, a foetus, is splendidly sardonic.

Not only does he pull it off, he does so triumphantly, in the cleverest book I’ve read this year. It’s smart, dark and at times very funny.

A saucy, claustrophobic and darkly funny story which is all rather peculiar. Compulsive reading.

I devoured Ian McEwan’s latest very funny spin on Hamlet.

An ingenious rewrite of Hamlet as a murder story in which a foetus is detective and possible victim.

This is McEwan at his most playfully provocative.

A clever conceit, elegantly wrought, economically constructed.

A bewitching ode to humanity’s beauty, longing and selfishness.

A enthralling read from one of the world’s master storytellers.

McEwan delights with lyrical prose that is fittingly poetic.

[A] work which both fascinates and disturbs through its unique perspective on a malicious death… Every sentence is a joy to behold, a gift to the reader of delicately considered prose, and thoughtful observations… Alongside its edgy and entertaining narration, and perhaps in part because of it, the novel manages to challenge all preconceptions of the crime genre, upending the whodunit into an extraordinary will-they-do-it… By nature, Nutshell is a novel which perplexes, entertains, and moves the reader in equal turn, all with McEwan’s startling attention to detail, and luxuriant prose style. Read it for its peculiar narrator, read it for the rapidly-changing and intense emotions, or read it just for the thrill of chase as the killing comes to fruition; whatever intrigues you about this novel, just make sure that you do read it – and feel the thrill for yourself.

Brilliantly realised… Any book so bound up in a conceit and in its own verbal fireworks at times runs the risk of being a bit clever-clever. But on the whole we accept in a suspension of disbelief the foetus’s pompous mastery of language and imagery and abandon ourselves to the sheer eloquent pleasure of this hilarious romp.

Short, odd but pleasurable… Great fun, and very well written.

Rich in Shakespearean allusion, this is McEwan on dazzling form.

Told from a perspective unlike any other, Nutshell is a classic tale of murder and deceit from one of the world’s master storytellers.

Ian McEwan’s brilliance as a stylist and surprise plotter finds a fitting subject in Nutshell…, which is Hamlet as told from inside the womb. Up there with his best.

A gripping tale is told with breathtaking skill, turbocharged with rage against the madness and despair of our modern world.

Nutshell is one of those books you sit down to read and don’t get up until you’ve finished. It is brilliantly executed and full of surprises; original, clever and witty. Simply a must-read

A book I couldn’t put down… brilliantly clever

Trudy 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.

Nutshell is a classic story of murder and deceit, told by a narrator with a perspective and voice unlike any in recent literature. A bravura performance, it is the finest recent work from a true master.

Ian McEwan is the critically acclaimed author of seventeen books. His first published work, a collection of short stories, First Love, Last Rites, won the Somerset Maugham Award. His novels include The Child in Time, which won the 1987 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award; The Cement Garden; Enduring Love; Amsterdam, which won the 1998 Booker Prize; Atonement; Saturday; On Chesil Beach; Solar; Sweet Tooth; The Children Act; and Nutshell, which was a Number One bestseller. Atonement and Enduring Love have both been turned into award-winning films, The Children Act and On Chesil Beach are in production and set for release this year, and filming is currently underway for a BBC TV adaptation of The Child in Time.

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