Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Nutshell by Ian McEwan

Nutshell by Ian McEwan

Define this book in a nutshell?  Weirdest retelling of Hamlet EVER.  Apparently some reviewers aren’t mentioning this which I find odd.  You know it’s a retelling of Hamlet in the first chapter, and I don’t think I picked up on it just because I’m a big fan of the bard, it’s pretty obvious.  Trudy is having an affair with Claude, the brother of her husband, and they are plotting to kill her cuckolded husband together.  Problem is there is a witness to their crime: the unborn child of Trudy and her poet husband, soon to be joining the dead poet society if she and Claude get their way.

Shakespeare's Hamlet is a very introspective character with all his soliloquies and his unborn self is a tiny version of his older self.  He doesn’t have anyone to talk to so he spends his squished days contemplating life, the universe and everything.  He loves his mom, because she’s his world, but he is terrified and heartbroken that his mom is plotting to kill his dad.  He wants Trudy and Claude to be caught, but then realizes that jail could really make his life difficult. What’s an unborn witness to do?

If you need a short read that is really different from anything else you’ve got it here.