Nutshell

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Nutshell

By: Ian McEwan

Narrated by: Rory Kinnear

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€6.99/month after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 28 December 2026.

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Summary

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.

Ian McEwanRory KinnearVintage Digital

Family Life

Genre Fiction

Psychological

Family Life Genre Fiction Psychological

Critics' 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.

Most relevant

Aus dem Mutterbauch heraus lässt Ian McEwan seinen Erzähler Zeuge eines perfiden Mordplans an dessen eigenem Vater werden. Die Geschichte kennen wir als Grundkonstellation aus „Hamlet“. Die Perspektive ist ebenso tückisch wie interessant; der Erzähler ein abstraktes Experiment, teils gelungen, teils nicht. Sprachlich ist das alles gut zu goutieren. Ja, „Nutshell“ ist sicher nicht perfekt. Aber hier traut sich ein Schriftsteller etwas Neues, und es ist allemal interessant, ihm dabei zu folgen.

Zum Sprecher:
Rory Kinnear? Doch, ihr kennt ihn. Seit „Ein Quantum Trost“ verkörpert er in den James Bond-Filmen M’s Assistenten Bill Tanner. Außerdem hat er eine feste Rolle in „Penny Dreadful“. Der ausgebildete Theatermime hat eine erwartungsgemäß geformte Stimme und Aussprache. In „Nutshell“ entspricht er dem literarischen Sprechertyp: er wahrt Distanz, wirkt intellektuell statt emotional. Das ist etwas eintönig, passt aber zum verkopften Text.