It’s a small, élite group: the authors whose books I always buy as soon as they are published.  It’s a group that changes from time to time.  I used to wait impatiently for new novels by the likes of Salman Rushdie and Martin Amis, but no more.  At some point they went to places I didn’t want to go.  I’m sure I feel the loss more than they do.  Inevitably and occasionally the group gets diminished by inconveniences (major for the author, less so for me) such as death.  No more novels from John McGahern, Brian Moore, P.D. James, and Iris Murdoch.  That’s a sad thought.  No matter; sometimes someone new joins the group, someone like Julian Barnes, and that’s enough to banish the blues.  I found Barnes’ earliest work dry and self-regarding, but more recent books have been wonderful.  He’s changed and so have I. *

Ian McEwan is in the group, no question, and has been for more than thirty years.  That’s not to say he doesn’t test my patience and loyalty from time to time.  He’s written one or two real duds in his long career.  Sweet Tooth, for example, or On Chesil Beach (which a friend whose taste I respect thinks is among McEwan’s best ever work).  I always forgive him.  Why wouldn’t I?  He gave me The Comfort of Strangers, Atonement, Saturday, and many more that I’ll be re-reading for years to come.

I’d heard before buying Nutshell that the story’s narrator was a fetus.  Call me unadventurous if you must but that made me nervous. Cute idea, I thought, but maybe too cute?  But hey, this is McEwan.  He’s in the group, he’s got some credit in the bank, let’s suspend criticism and see where he takes me.  Our fetal narrator, just a few short weeks from birth, hears his mother plotting to kill his father.  And guess who’s the co-conspirator?  The father’s brother, keen to get his hands on some valuable real estate.  If you’re getting echos of Hamlet, don’t be surprised.  The parallels are explicit and quite deliberate.

There’s some lovely writing here and, perhaps surprisingly given the somewhat grand guignol plot, some very funny passages. I don’t usually think of McEwan as a comic writer, although there’s some very dark humor in some of the early novels, but there’s a light, deft touch in Nutshell that I liked a lot.  That said, it’s not one of his greatest works.  It reminded me of one of those pieces a great pianist might give as an encore, designed to show off the performer’s mastery of technique.  A delightful and charming crowd-pleaser, but not the magnum opus you wanted to hear.  Nutshell may not add much to his corpus but McEwan’s place in the group is safe, at least for now.

*Perhaps you’re wondering who else is in the group.  Haruki Murakami, Graham Swift, and Colm Toibin for sure, perhaps one or two others.