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The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan is one of those rare books that simultaneously you can’t put down and yet are scared to pick up. Presenting disturbing themes that send shivers down your spine, McEwan’s first ever novel leaves you feeling a little bit dirty each time you turn a page. Incest, masturbation and secret burials in the basement make for risqué reading: reading that makes you question moral boundaries whilst providing mere sensationalist titillation.
The novel is narrated by every psychologist’s dream patient, a fifteen year old boy named Jack. Indulging in sporadic masturbation, frequently over his elder sister Julie, Jack becomes a perverse reflection on the moping emotional turmoil of a teenage boy raging with hormones. Starting off peculiarly with sexual games amongst three of the four siblings, the book becomes more and more perverse as each parent dies off; the orphaned children strive to maintain their independent status in an attempt to ward off the inevitable care home scenario. McEwan less than subtly incorporates Freudian themes into a fairly straightforward story-line, resulting in a setting in which the normal and familiar turn into something straight from a psychologist’s textbook.
The subtle use of literary device in The Cement Garden makes you feel like you may not be reading a novel at all; the use of magical realism enhances the feeling that this is only a slightly warped version of a real situation. Ensuing psychological disturbance is of no fault of the author however. Like in Angela Carter’s twisted fairy tales, the reader seeks out their own connotations and interpretations as the author twists a story-line that at once is nostalgic and familiar whilst being as perverse as is legally possible without resorting to hardcore pornographic literature.
Ultimately, this novel is a work of genius. Whilst being sexy enough to be titillating and keep you reading, it also has a serious moral undertone that makes it more than mere sensationalism. Having never read or seen Atonement, I could not comment on the relation between the two. From what I’ve heard however, McEwan’s central themes are based around the questionable reality of the concept of right and wrong. If when reading this book you decide any of the characters’ actions fall into the ‘right’ category, I suggest that you get yourself to your nearest shrink. McEwan creates characters as psychologically flawed as they come; characters that make you worry about the author’s twisted, and yet amazing, imagination and state of mind.
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