literary fiction
The Cement Garden
We follow Jack (the narrator), Julie, Sue, and Tom and their story with unease. Some compare this novel to the Lord of the Flies, where children are left all by themselves. Reading this novel, we become helpless observers of how things go wrong.
I wanted to dive into the story without knowing much about the plot. Of course, there were some minor shocks, and I read it with unease. If you want to do the same, I should warn you about some heavy topics and taboo themes inside.
The Cement Garden is Ian McEwan’s debut. It is one of the two novels that earned the author a nickname, Ian McAbre. So you can get a slight hint about its content. It is a grim, psychological novel of dysfunctional relationships and, occasionally, breaks some boundaries and taboos about sexuality and relationships among siblings.
McEwan's works have earned him worldwide critical acclaim. He won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1976 for his first collection of short stories First Love, Last Rites; the Whitbread Novel Award (1987) and the Prix Fémina Etranger (1993) for The Child in Time; and Germany's Shakespeare Prize in 1999. He has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction numerous times, winning the award for Amsterdam in 1998. His novel Atonement received the WH Smith Literary Award (2002), National Book Critics' Circle Fiction Award (2003), Los Angeles Times Prize for Fiction (2003), and the Santiago Prize for the European Novel (2004). He was awarded a CBE in 2000. In 2006, he won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel Saturday and his novel On Chesil Beach was named Galaxy Book of the Year at the 2008 British Book Awards where McEwan was also named Reader's Digest Author of the Year.
I wanted to dive into the story without knowing much about the plot. Of course, there were some minor shocks, and I read it with unease. If you want to do the same, I should warn you about some heavy topics and taboo themes inside.
The Cement Garden is Ian McEwan’s debut. It is one of the two novels that earned the author a nickname, Ian McAbre. So you can get a slight hint about its content. It is a grim, psychological novel of dysfunctional relationships and, occasionally, breaks some boundaries and taboos about sexuality and relationships among siblings.
 |
| Goodreads |
Details:
- author: Ian McEwan
- full title: The Cement Garden
- genre: literary fiction
- format/type: bookfiction
- topics:
- publisher: Vintage
- publish date: 05.08.2004 (first published 1978)
- pages: 144
My Rating of the Book:
- content: 💙💙💙💙
Excerpt from the Book:
About the Author:
Ian McEwan studied at the University of Sussex, where he received a BA degree in English Literature in 1970 and later received his MA degree in English Literature at the University of East Anglia.McEwan's works have earned him worldwide critical acclaim. He won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1976 for his first collection of short stories First Love, Last Rites; the Whitbread Novel Award (1987) and the Prix Fémina Etranger (1993) for The Child in Time; and Germany's Shakespeare Prize in 1999. He has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction numerous times, winning the award for Amsterdam in 1998. His novel Atonement received the WH Smith Literary Award (2002), National Book Critics' Circle Fiction Award (2003), Los Angeles Times Prize for Fiction (2003), and the Santiago Prize for the European Novel (2004). He was awarded a CBE in 2000. In 2006, he won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel Saturday and his novel On Chesil Beach was named Galaxy Book of the Year at the 2008 British Book Awards where McEwan was also named Reader's Digest Author of the Year.
... authors from all around the World.
