Nutshell

The nearly full-term fetus who narrates McEwan's latest novel is aware of his limitations; in addition to living in an increasingly cramped environment—the metaphorical and titular nutshell—his knowledge of the world is broad but incomplete. What he has learned in nine months of gestation has been gleaned from overheard conversations and the media consumed by Trudy, his mother. Still, his sense of propriety is as well formed as that of the most ardent Emily Post devotee, and he finds Trudy's adultery and eviction of John, his father, from his own childhood home to be absolutely unacceptable. Learning that Claude, Trudy's lover, is also John's brother nearly gives the narrator the fetal version of the vapors. His inability to intervene makes his mother's and uncle's treachery, first in their infidelity, then in their hastily constructed plot to murder John, that much more distressing to witness. Rory Kinnear ably voices the novel's small cast of characters.