Es una de las primeras creaciones del autor y ya se nota su magnífico estilo, pero el libro lobhe encontrado algo errático.

Colección de relatos primerizos que contiene algunas de las obsesiones del autor, especialmente las conexiones entre la pasión amorosa y formas de violencia y sadismo, como ya ocurría en El placer del viajero.

Son relatos perturbadores, no demasiado agradables, que incomodan y exploran las zonas oscuras del comportamiento humano pero en ámbitos muy cotidianos y con personajes bastante anodinos.

Obviamente, está muy por detrás de sus mejores obras como Expiación, Sábado o On Chesil Beach, pero puede ser interesante para los aficionados a Ian McEwan que quieran rastrear el germen de sus obsesiones literarias.

I've read five or six of McEwan's books, but this collection of short stories had somehow fallen through the cracks. Until now. Unfortunately (it seems anticlimactic to say) I am, for the first time with McEwan, underwhelmed by the work.

In fact, I'm posting this comment only five days after finishing it and I already seem to have forgotten much of the stories involved. I recall my disappointment at the ends of the most of them. I recall often reminding myself that he wrote them in 1978 or even earlier, and was obviously experimenting with style, structure and plot (or lack thereof) as one does in one's youth.

To be clear, none of them are badly written. They vary wildly in tone, length and subject, and there's more than a few great lines to be found in them. This was simply the case of my having both conscious and subconscious expectations of McEwan's writing I wish I'd been better at putting aside.

Had this been the first of his books that I'd read, I highly doubt I'd have deliberately sought out more for some time, if at all. Luckily, I was fortunate enough to be familiar with his later work in the ensuing decades (several of them personal, lifetime favorites) before so belatedly picking this up. As a result, it was a fascinating glimpse for me into the nascent seeds (and seedlings) from which he later grew into one of the master storytellers working today.

I'm a bit glad that McEwan went away from his "Macabre" moniker after his first four books, because while he writes sexy/creepy quite well (a British Mary Gaitskill), the stories sort of blended together for me. I think The Cement Garden is the best of early Ian.