I just finished "Nutshell" by Ian McEwan, and it's the best novel I've read in a very long time. While it sounds really quirky, it doesn't read that way — it just reads beautifully. The book is about a nearly due pregnant woman who's made her husband, a poet, leave their London townhouse while she has an affair with his brother and they plot his murder. The book is told from the point of view of the nine-month-old fetus, who's very articulate and well-informed due to listening to his mother's choice of podcasts and hearing other sounds around him, including conversations between his mother and father and her lover. It's witty and smart, and McEwan demonstrates to us all how to really write a point of view, and how to write.
JOAN MCGRATH
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