Nutshell

By: Ian McEwan

Narrated by: Rory Kinnear

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.

Critic reviews

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. (Hephzibah Anderson)

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

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. (John Harding)

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. (Robert Douglas-Fairhurst)

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. (Kate Clanchy)

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. (Daily Mail)

One of the most hilariously unlikely narrators in contemporary fiction. (Claire Lowdon)

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? (Arifa Akbar)

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.

Best Ian's book

One of best book i ever read. It shall be awarded by a Nobel prize

Riveting perspective on the plotting of a murder!

Having a fully conscious as-yet-unborn baby provide the first person perspective on the plotting of a murder, is absolutely unique. Definitely my book recommendation for this month!

Both the writer and the narrator have done a great job.

Great performance, reader and author well matched.

My wife and I listened in the car during a long drive. We both loved it. Very erudite. Highly recommended especially if you like wine tasting. The nutshell perspective works brilliantly.

i wanted more

beautifully crafted, creative, insightful - i wanted more . I will listen to it again.

Unique perspective

I have not read anything comparable to this. It is clever,weirdly accessible and dry,dark and funny all at the same time. I am sorry it finished.