Ian McEwan - Nutshell (Penguin, 2016) ***½

How wonderful when Ian McEwen describes human life in all its vulnerabilities, perversities, evil and goodness. How great when the characters are all too human, yet a little exaggerated to make the story compelling. How great when he makes these characters' desire for freedom and self-determination clash with conventions of marriage. How great to show the tragedy of humanity among people who are very close to each other: husband and wife and the husband's brother who is also the wife's lover. How great to put all the ingredients of a tragedy in place and one day: lust, betrayal, murder, greed.

... and how amazing when all this human toil is told from the perspective of the unborn child in the womb of one of the story's protagonists?

... and how attractive when the foetus narrator has this all-knowing, all savouring cynical streak about him, complaining as much about the dick entering his mother's vagina as he can savour the excellent wine she is drinking, and even able to tell from which château.

... but the whole human tragedy, however insignificant and small, has a serious impact on the little boy who's ready to strangle himself with the umbilical cord, the only thing he might be able to do in his little womb-world of powerlessness.

"Outside these warm, living walls an icy tale slides towards its hideous conclusion. (...) The cork is drawn from one more bottle, then, too soon, another. I'm washed far downstream of drunkenness, my senses blur their words but I hear in them the form of my ruin. Shadow figures on a bloody screen are arguing in hopeless struggle with their fate. Their voices rise and fall. When they don't accuse or wrangle, they conspire. What's said hangs in the air, like a Beijing smog".

McEwan at his best.