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Book Review: "The Cement Garden" by Ian McEwan

5/5 - Dark and repulsive, a masterpiece of tragedy...

By Annie KapurPublished 3 years ago 3 min read
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Domestic Thrillers are a point of interest in my reading life, I have read many from the strange tragedy “The Arden of Faversham” all the way down to the novels of Lisa Jewell and company. There are huge differences throughout history when it comes to the domestic thriller, but I have never quite been able to put my finger on what has been missing until now. Children. Children are not left out, if you ask me. But in the realm of domestic thriller, the ‘thrilling’ nature of the book normally takes place between the mother and father rather than the children and the parents. Be that as it may, I think I have finally found a domestic thriller that does not only the latter one, but seems to do both in quite a stomach churning manner. When I say I have read a lot of Ian McEwan, I even have a signed copy of that book he wrote about Shakespeare’s Hamlet. But, I had constantly overlooked this one for some reason and to be honest, it has thoroughly disgusted and surprised me. But mostly, it disgusted me.

There are four children, two girls and two boys. They live with their mother and father. The father has a difficult time connecting with the children if you ask me, his treatment of his youngest son is almost Oedipal. But, be that as it may - he dies near the start of the book and it couldn’t have come sooner enough. He was a messed up man. Anyways, the mother is taken ill almost immediately afterwards and dies in her bed one morning much to the children’s sadness. Unable to process their grief, the youngest boy reverts and regresses back to being a toddler, the girls begin to act like abusive mothers and the boyfriend of the eldest daughter almost finds out a strange secret about the cement garden. A deep and engrossing novel that is basically seven levels of absolutely messed up, this thriller will probably not chill you as you want, but you may want to eat your breakfast and get it out of the way before you pick this up. When I say I couldn’t eat breakfast after reading this, I mean it. This book thrilled and yet, thoroughly repulsed me.

Written in this classic Ian McEwan style in which the characters toe the line between being romantic idols and being absolutely disgusting in every way possible, these almost modern Byronic characters do what they need to in order to survive even though their surviving is not as everyone would like them to survive. It is a wonderfully complex novel and I would highly recommend that you are not fooled by the shortness of the book itself, but take your time with the characters and see if you can make it through in one sitting. I had to put it down for a few minutes and I couldn’t even drink my coffee. When you think about the fact that these are literal children, it messes with your head. It also makes you wonder why they would do such things.

From start to finish, this book could not be written by anyone else in a more terrifying and romantic way. Ian McEwan, master of the great romantic suspense novel, has created a world in which we need to question the very system that the children are trying to keep away from as they commit one of the world’s most regrettable acts. It is beautiful, tragic, disgusting, repulsive, demented, out of order and brilliantly written. You could only guess it was written by Ian McEwan.

literature
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About the Creator

Annie Kapur

190K+ Reads on Vocal.

English Lecturer

🎓Literature & Writing (B.A)

🎓Film & Writing (M.A)

🎓Secondary English Education (PgDipEd)

📍Birmingham, UK

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