Nutshell, by Ian McEwan | Review
I recently read Nutshell, a novel published in 2016 by English author Ian McEwan. In recent times I didn’t feel like reading too complex or dense books (perhaps because the world in the middle of the pandemic is already too complicated), so Nutshell came at a good time, as it’s a very funny reading, although the story touches on topics like revenge, betrayal and murder. It’s easy to understand the author’s choice of these subjects: this book is a retelling of Hamlet, one of William Shakespeare’s most famous tragedies, and is full of references to other Shakespearean works.
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The narrator is unusual: a fetus, in the last weeks of formation inside the mother’s womb. Like a The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas, but reversed — while this is narrated by a “deceased author”, whose flesh has already been devoured by worms, Nutshell is narrated by someone who has not yet been born. The fetus is extremely sarcastic, cultured and intelligent, and very funny. Although he sees nothing of what happens beyond his mother’s body, he’s an attentive listener, from the podcasts that Trudy, his mother, listens to even the sinister conversations that involve his mother’s plan to murder her husband, John Cairncross, in cahoots with her lover, Claude — who is nothing less than the baby’s uncle.
The funniest parts of the book, for me, are the ones that the baby tells about his experience with alcohol — despite being pregnant, Trudy still enjoys good wines with her lover, and it’s in her womb that her son narrates his first experiences with drunkenness. He practically becomes a sommelier.
“I know that alcohol will lower my intelligence. It lowers everybody’s intelligence. But oh, a joyous, blushful Pinot Noir, or a gooseberried Sauvignon, sets me turning and tumbling across my secret sea, reeling off the walls of my castle, the bouncy castle that is my home. Or so it did when I had more space. Now I take my pleasures sedately, and by the second glass my speculations bloom with that licence whose name is poetry.”
Reading Nutshell left me dying to read Hamlet. I even bought this beautiful edition of Ubu, a Brazilian publisher, which brings 21 woodcuts created by Edward Gordon Craig for the classic edition of Hamlet published in 1930 by Cranach Press. For those who like Shakespeare, another tip is the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast, which brings several discussions about the Shakespearean work.
We are in a nutshell
As I read the book, I thought about the parallel between the baby cloistered in the mother’s body and the social isolation of the pandemic. Throughout the work, the narrator-fetus describes his feeling of helplessness because he cannot change the direction of what happens in the outside world. I have been at home in quarantine for five months — I have the privilege of being able to work remotely — and, many times while reading the book, I identified myself with the fetus’ impossibility of action. Protected, at home, but without seeing ways to change the world beyond me.
The dilemmas of real life, outside the “nutshell”, are many: inefficient policies to combat the advance of covid-19 in Brazil, millions of people losing their sources of income, thousands of deaths that could be avoided. Over time, I realized that suffering for what is not in my hands would not change reality, and that it would be much more efficient to think about how I can help those close to me. And, going back to the book, at some point, even the baby-Hamlet shows that in fact he could change his reality. For me, it represented hope. In a way, Nutshell tells a story of isolation, and I highly recommend reading it at this moment!
Highlights
“God said, Let there be pain. And there was poetry. Eventually.”
“There are not many options for the evening that follows an afternoon of drinking. Only two in fact: remorse, or more drinking and then remorse.”
“No one exclaims at the moment of one’s dazzling coming-out, It’s a person! Instead: It’s a girl, It’s a boy. Pink or blue — a minimal improvement on Henry Ford’s offer of cars of any colour so long as they were black. Only two sexes. I was disappointed. If human bodies, minds, fates are so complex, if we are free like no other mammal, why limit the range?”
