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Background

Published in 2016 by Jonathan Cape. It is McEwan’s 14th novel.  Other titles include On Chesil Beach, Atonement, Sweet Tooth, and Lessons (2022).

Genre:  Literary

Setting: London, UK, contemporary

Additional Notes and reviews:  

The narrator and POV is that of an unborn child inside one of the main characters.  As with other novels by McEwan, the language is so beautiful and so precise and so unique.  The voice of the fetus is clear and though one must suspend disbelief, it is a wonderfully creative use of POV. 

Additionally, upon rereading, even though it is almost eight years old, it reads as fresh and insightful about world events, about society, about so many things.

NY Times review

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/06/books/review-nutshell-a-tale-told-by-a-baby-to-be-or-not-to-be.html 

Review in the Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/aug/27/nutshell-by-ian-mcewan-review 

Theme:  Human Nature is essentially evil—humans are nasty, brutish, and selfish—from birth.

Discussion Questions:

1. When you first started reading the book, what did you think about the narrator?  Do you think this narrator worked for telling the story?  Why or why not?

   
   



2. Who was the protagonist or the story?  Why do you think this person is the protagonist?

   
   



3. What details did McEwan use to give the reader information about the character without too much telling?

   
   



4. Did you think they got away with it?  Why or why not?  Why do you think he left the ending open?

   
   



5. Do you think the message of the book was clear?  What do you think it was?

   
   

Things we thought McEwan did well as a writer that we would like to emulate.:

• Voice—The narrator makes us believe he is a fetus?  Through his observations and the way he understands things and the way he hears and imagines what is happening.  He never breaks character, and he is utterly believable as a fetus. 

  
  



• Prose is tight and not one single word, even the adverbs, are wasted—He even once makes a reference to insisting on the adverb, his writing is so assured.  

  
  



• Literary References/Genre Conventions—Is it Hamlet?  The Guardian reviewer thinks so, and I am inclined to agree.  There are also plentiful references to other literary texts and poetry all woven seamlessly, so that they are both signposts to the reader and amplifiers of the prose. He plays with form by using a thriller as the canvas on which to hang the novel.  It isn’t really a thriller or a mystery, but he uses the tropes of both—plotting, murder, adultery, investigation, suspense over whether they will get caught—to create the tension in a story that is really neither of those things. 

  
  

Something to think on:

Authors frequently worry that they have to be completely original.  While the way he told the story is highly creative, the story is essentially a retelling.  What does that mean for writers?