Published in 2016,

, Ian McEwan’s fourteenth novel, is a “crisp work of 199 pages” (Aitkenhead). Narrated in the first person by, in the author’s estimation, a “thirty-eight-week-old foetus” (Pinker), the story is a contemporary version of

in which the protagonist is unborn but equally philosophical and “troubled” (1). Borrowing the premise of a scheming pair of lovers from Macbeth, the novel follows the plotting of the murder of the unborn narrator’s father, poet John Cairncross. The greedy perpetrators are expecting mother Trudy, John’s twenty-eight-year-old wife, and her lover, John’s brother, property-developer Claude Cairncross. While a narrating foetus with an impressive vocabulary constitutes “an outrageously audacious conceit” (Jones),…

3614 words

Citation: Logotheti, Anastasia. "Nutshell". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 11 August 2017 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=35795, accessed 18 April 2024.]

• View recommended reading for this article