
Nutshell
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
3 months free
Buy for $13.75
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Rory Kinnear
-
By:
-
Ian McEwan
From the best-selling author of Atonement, Nutshell is a classic story of murder and deceit, told by a narrator with a perspective and voice unlike any in recent literature. A bravura performance, it is the finest recent work from a true master.
To be bound in a nutshell, see the world in two inches of ivory, in a grain of sand. Why not, when all of literature, all of art, of human endeavour is just a speck in the universe of possible things?
©2016 Ian McEwan (P)2016 Random House AudiobooksListeners also enjoyed...




















Critic reviews
People who viewed this also viewed...


















Superb, as expected...
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I just had to find out what happened to the baby!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
excellent narration.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
First sentence will pull you in.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
this book and abandoned it for another. So glad I gave it a second chance. Good story told by a novel narrator, it is certainly worth your time.
So glad I gave this a second chance
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Great story, fabulous narration
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A very different murder story.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Trudy is roughly nine months pregnant. Although she separated from her husband John, a not very successful poet and publisher, she still lives in the dilapidated family home in London that he inherited., while John has moved to a flat in Shoreditch. Trudy initially told him that they needed time apart to make the marriage work--but she is deep into an affair with his younger brother Claude, a real estate developer (who has about the same level of class as the current Republican presidential candidate). Despite her advanced pregnancy, Trudy and Claude engage in regular and vigorous sex, leaving our narrator to worry that he will have his fontanel poked in or will absorb some essence of the deplorable Claude into his being. He does, however, enjoy the finer wines that his mother imbibes and has developed quite the connoisseur's palate.
The trouble begins when John announces that he knows about and accepts Trudy and Claude's relationship, confesses that he has a new lover of his own, and states that he wants to move back into the family home. The plot thickens as Trudy and Claude decide that John must go--permanently. And our narrator is positioned to eavesdrop on their plans to murder his father and give him up for adoption. If Shakespeare's Hamlet was hampered by indecision, well, this protagonist is even more incapacitated by his unborn state. Literally and emotionally attached to his mother (he experiences every hormonal and adrenal shift), he is nonetheless horrified by the plot against his father's life and by the thought of Trudy giving him up to live with the detested Claude.
In addition to the obvious parallels to Hamlet, McEwan weaves well-known lines from the play into Nutshell, although the words are sometimes put into the mouths of unexpected characters and sometimes subtly changed, a word here or there. If you're familiar with the play, the effect is delightful--reminiscent of the way in which famous lines by the Bard keep popping up in Tom Stoppard's screenplay for "Shakespeare in Love." And McEwan brings it all to a climax that, in its own context, rivals the final scene of Hamlet. "The rest is chaos."
McEwan Does It Again
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Masaharu Morimoto meet Ian McEwan- both masters of their domain! I devoured this novel as I would lobster with wasabi pepper sauce at Nobu in NYC. Enjoy every word - ps (spoiler alert!!!). Everyone gets their just desserts in the end. A satisfying ending.
If you want to read a thriller that brings to mind an exquisite Bordeaux....
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The narrator vanished into the story, which is how I feel it should be. For a different story I might prefer a more theatrically oriented reading but the narrator let the words speak.
Strange and beautiful
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.