Book Review | Book Chatter

Nutshell
By Ian McEwan
Anchor Books, 9780525431947, May 2017, 224pp.

The Short of It:

A clever take on Hamlet as told by a fetus.

The Rest of It:

You don’t need to be familiar with Hamlet in order to enjoy Nutshell but it certainly helps.

Trudy leaves her husband John for his brother, Claude. Together, Trudy and Claude come up with a plan to murder John. The house they occupy is quite valuable. With John out-of-the-way, they could potentially make quite a bit of money. But their plan is not a secret to Trudy’s unborn child. The child is fiercely loyal to his mother and somewhat loyal to his paternal father, John, Mostly because he cannot stand the vile Claude.

This is not a new idea. Movies like Look Who’s Talking have provided platforms for the unborn to voice their opinions but in Nutshell, Trudy and John’s child is very well-spoken, a wine connoisseur (due to his mother’s affinity for drink) and hilarious with his high-brow take on the dim-witted plan these two have hatched.

Nutshell is very literary and clever and superbly written. I’ve read many of McEwan’s books and all of them have been good, with Atonement being my favorite. However, Nutshell was very enjoyable. It was a book club pick and many in the group agreed that it was humorous in its own way, but some felt it was a little over-the-top with its pretentiousness. I didn’t mind that part of it and had no trouble suspending my disbelief over the fetus telling the story, but the scheme these two come up was riddled with holes from the beginning so believability in that regard is non-existent.

Have you read it? I think some readers are intimidated by McEwan and if that’s the case, I recommend Nutshell because it’s not as heavy as some of his other books.

Source: Borrowed
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The Master and Margarita
By Mikhail Bulgakov
Grove Press, 9780802130112, (Original 1967), 402pp.

The Short of It:

This is a fantastical tale of good and evil. There’s a fast-talking cat, a witch, Satan himself and a beheading that starts the ball rolling (pun intended).

The Rest of It:

The Master and Margarita is a favorite book to many but it’s a wondrous, crazy tale that reminded me a lot of Haruki Murakami’s work, minus the everyman take.

It’s hard to describe the story but basically the Master is an author whose work about Christ is so rejected by his peers that he decides to burn the manuscript. This leaves him bitter and just a shell of his former self.

His mistress, Margarita, refuses to let this turn of events affect her so one night, she accepts an invitation to a ball which first begins by her rubbing this special cream all over her body. This act transforms her into a beautiful, younger version of herself. Along with this youth, she is given the ability to fly which she uses to fly right into Satan’s ball. There, she discovers things about herself and makes a decision which will affect her life forever.

This is a book to experience. I can’t say that I understood all of the references but it has been said that Bulgakov wrote the book in response to the blatant Atheism in Soviet Russia. It delves into good and evil and what it means to be outspoken is a world that is not free. It’s definitely a book that begs to be read more than once.

Having experienced this book now for the first time, I can see why it’s a beloved classic but I don’t believe one reading puts it in that category. I would love to take a class where all that we study is this book because it’s bursting with imagery and meaning.

Have you read it? If so, what did you think of it?

Source: Purchased
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

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