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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
A modern classic, 19 Jan 2002
A perverse but enchanting book; beautifully written and perfectly constructed. This is a story about a family of children who find themselves orphaned while living in a house surrounded by a wasteland, an image that perfectly reflects the emptiness of their days. Finding themselves without adult guidance, it shows how they slide into sloth and then perversity. Being a writer of consumate skill and a gifted story-teller, McEwan describes this without purple prose but with a sharp eye on human nature. Despite the shocking nature of the story, it has a realistic feel to it - One feels that these events could happen given the circumstances. The characters are delinated so convincingly that the reader, despite the perverse nature of the protaganists actions, is drawn into their dark world and is made to see it from their point of view. A modern classic.
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
Crafted, Unique, Original, 17 April 2001
Ian McEwan's prose debut changed the scene of British prose and redefined a genre. Typically, horror conjures up gloom, gristle and American films. McEwan replaced that with clarity, and took us on a journey through the horrors of modern life in a way that was taciturn, clear, but all the more horrifying as a result. The size of this book (Under 140 pages) means you could finish this in an afternoon, and it is divided perfectly. The prose is as neat and perfect as the cubes of colour in a child's paintbox. The area around the narrator's family is an urban waste land, demolished for an unbuilt motorway. The Father dies in chapter one, the Mother by the end of part 1. The isolation is complete, and McEwan's experiment truly begins. The children do not get help. They do not call the police. They take care of matters as best as they can, binding them closer. From then on, we view each in their own ways - the youngest child regresses mentally to a baby, and is cared for by the heroine of the novel Julie. As always with McEwan, the women are the most resilient customers. She effortlessly assumes the role of Mother. Jack is every teenage male - ruthless if he had the courage, spotty, obsessed with more red-handed pursuits. Julie out-does him hands down in taking care of the family, suntanning and getting a boyfriend. What does Jack have to offer? Only his physical strength, until the end when the two finally comfort each other in a beautifully written passage. (This is where McEwan's unique idiom makes its power felt) Immoral? It can be argued that the children have coped better in their own way with orphanhood than our culture permits. In earlier centuries, all the features of coping with bereavement are played out in this economically expressed modern-day fable - sibling incest, infantilism - and the comparison to the social services' impending arrival (Summoned by a poignantly smug and shallow character)seems stark - no bureaucrat could give Jack Julie's sisterly tenderness. Of course I DON'T condone the act of incest, but crucially recognise that in order for our objections to be formed, the moral ground of precisely what is 'natural' and 'functional' in the first place has to be compared critically. I think The Cement Garden, if only briefly, will have you doing precisely this. This is McEwan's way of getting inside your head. This is where we find McEwan's near-gravitational attraction in literature.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
Clever, sinister, brilliant..., 15 Nov 2004
The Cement Garden is McEwan at his best. Crueler than Enduring Love and Amsterdam, The Cement Garden tells the story of four children who fall apart gradually after the death of their mother. Their incestuous behaviour and malicious ways are a delight to read, and the narrator, Jack, is a brilliantly depicted character. Overall, I would highly recommend this. McEwan is truly the master of the chilling short novel, and The Cement Garden is executed with style and definite readibility. The end is too disturbing for words- an excellent read.
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