Nutshell

Every so often, I head over to our local Barnes and Noble and cruise the aisles, checking out new books. If the book has an interesting cover,  I pick it up, read the back cover or the inside flap for a synopsis of the story. If this captures my interest, I turn to the first page and read it. If it seizes me, I buy the book. This is true whether I’m familiar with the author or not.

This is what happened with Ian McEwan’s novel Nutshell, published in 2016. I bought the paperback version, which came out in May. Here’s the first line:

So here I am, upside down in a woman. Okay, that seized me. I knew from the back cover copy that the novel was written from a fetus’s point of view. He goes on: Arms patiently crossed, waiting, waiting, and wondering who I’m in, what I’m in for. My eyes close nostalgically when I remember how I once drifted in my translucent water bag, floated dreamily in the bubble of my thoughts through my private ocean in slow motion somersaults, colliding gently against the transparent bounds of my confinement, the confiding membrane that vibrated with, even as it muffled, the voices of conspirators in a vile enterprise.

I already knew from the back cover copy that the fetus’s mother is planning on murdering his father. And this fetus knows it. Nutshell is one of the most unusual novels I’ve ever read. The premise is brilliant, but what’s really startling, though, is that McEwan’s creativity extends beyond his gender, into what it’s like for a woman to be pregnant and what it may be like for that in vitro soul, crammed into this tiny space of the womb.

One of the most innovative scenes and laugh out loud scenes happens when mom imbibes more than 3 glasses of wine and the fetus lets you in on what he knows about  the types of wine. It’s speculative fiction at its best.