I saw the movie version of The Cement Garden in the theater when I was fifteen, and completely freaked out. For years afterwards it stayed high on my list of all-time favorites. I haven't seen it again since then, though, so I have no idea what I'd think now, but at the time I just thought it was the greatest thing ever. Incest! Allegory. Incest! Foreigners! Incest! Cement. Incest! Adolescence. Tragedy! Incest! What more do you want from a film at age fifteen?

Reading this book was definitely colored by my long-ago experience of the movie, and it was impossible for me to tell to what extent. To me, this book read like a screenplay. All the characters, locations, and action seemed very cinematic, in a good way. I think it's very funny that this was originally marketed as a sensationalistic horror novel, though I guess that makes a certain kind of sense. I mean, it's a little macabre, in its way, I suppose. I really did like it a lot, though some of that must have to do with the thrill I got knowing that even Ian McEwan had to start somewhere. I actually thought this was very well-written, but it was still like looking at the pimply, gangly, compulsively masturbating adolescent who will someday blossom into a distinguished grey-haired, smirking master of the English sentence. To think, the universally acclaimed sex-pervert novelist who wrote Atonement was once a smug-looking first-time novelist in a macrame vest! This should give us all hope.

I really liked this book, and I might give it four stars. It is one of the ones where you really feel like you're in the place he's describing and can see all the people, and that's worth real points where I come from. I think I'm just holding him to a higher standard because he's Ian McEwan, also because lately I'm just giving everything three stars because.... that's just sort of how I'm feeling these days. Oh, and it was flawed. I mean, I'm pretty sure it was. But I'm so confused by having seen the movie at one point that I don't feel I can talk about this book with any authority.

This book is fucked-up, sick, and creepy...I loved it. I love McEwan's style. He doesn't clutter his writing with unnecessary words, yet he says so much. His writing is sharp and clean. He is so good at invoking a specific mood at the very beginning of a novel, and then continuing to give the reader that same feeling throughout. Then, just when you're sufficiently creeped out or unnerved or whatever it is you've been feeling, it gets even more intense.

The book is a first-person narrative told by the eldest son of a family of four children. Two boys and two girls. It describes what the children do with themselves when both of their parents die relatively close to one another. The kids are already insular and strange, and we see how they deal with caring for themselves and their surroundings. We also see how their roles and interactions with each other change after the second parent dies.

I don't want to give anything more away, but I want to say that I like it when a book unnerves me, and this did the job.

I was led to Ian McEwan's "The Cement Garden" by Carmen Callil's and Colm Toibin's excellent book, "The Modern Library." Having formed the opinion that I was woefully "unread" after picking up that volume, I decided to take these two authors' advice and dive into those books selected as the most influential books written in English since 1950.

"The Cement Garden," written by McEwan in 1978, is a chilling little book about children living on their own without parents. Essentially, McEwan has constructed an urban "Lord of the Flies." Intermingled with themes of social isolation and adolescent sexuality, Freud's Oedipal complex looms large throughout an uneasy psychological tale of a family's dysfunction.

Jack, the fifteen year old son, one of four children, is the narrator. This is the opening sentence: "I did not kill my father, but I sometimes felt I had helped him on his way. And but for the fact that it coincided with a landmark in my own physical growth, his death seemed insignificant compared with what followed."

That landmark in physical growth is Jack's first ejaculation which he accomplishes while Da is busily cementing over the yard out of a sense of efficiency. Perhaps if Jack hadn't been involved in that act of self discovery, poor Da wouldn't have ended up face down in a puddle of wet cement.

Jack psychically erases the existence of his father by smoothing his impression in the cement away after the corpse is carried away by ambulance. There is no grieving process that follows. Death is something that simply happens and must be accepted.

What follows is simply told in a straight forward manner. Shortly after the unnamed father dies of a heart attack, the mother dies of a lingering illness. To Jack and Julie, the oldest, it seemed so obvious at the time to hide their mother's death to remain together. The solution? Cover Mum in a trunk with cement down in the cellar.

Julie is seventeen. She is the obvious choice to become head of the family. Jack resents her assertion of authority. Sue, thirteen, keeps a secret diary, recording their lives, although the reader is only supplied with the briefest of glimpses when she reads a small bit to Jack. Tommy, only four, decides it would be better to become a girl. His sisters readily take to the idea, outfitting him with a wig, blouses and skirts.

As time passes, with no parent on the scene, Tommy regresses to being a baby once more. Julie puts up the old baby crib in her room, assuming the role of mother to the degree she is able, which isn't much, to put it simply.

Inevitably, Mum's death cannot be hidden. There's a crack in the cement covering her body. The sweet sick smell of death permeates the house.

When Julie brings home a boyfriend, Derek, things are going to fall apart. McEwan's gloomy tale skids to a tumultuous climax. This bleak novel is a precise portrait of the grotesque. This is not a book lightly read nor easily forgotten. The subject matter is not pleasant, nor is it meant to be. One turns the page with a degree of squeamishness, but also fascination, as the facts unfold through Jack's unblinking and unrelenting perspective.

McEwan's subsequent three novels in conjunction with the darkness of this story earned him the reputation of being "Ian McAbre." However, in "The Cement Garden," the reader sees the origin of the author who would win the Booker with "Amsterdam," and the writer of the widely read "Atonement." This is one to add to your read stack if you've not already done so.

رواية مزعجة.. بدايتها تبدو عادية عن فترة الطفولة والمراهقة في حياة 4 أبناء
وبالتدريج يتحول التواطؤ بينهم إلى علاقات مشوهة تخرج عن السيطرة في النهاية

Well..! That was.. Hmm, weird?
Yes, weird.

And I'm not talking about that 'taboo' subject, that was actually not a focus in the book. Right? We just got glimpses but never full-on until the very last scene and even then it wasn't like graphic

The only thing I will say about this is it destroyed my appetite! I actually felt bile in my mouth. Not the taboo part but the burial and those cellar scenes.




It was a good thing the book was short otherwise I'd never have finished it.

3.5 Este livro é tudo o que a crítica diz dele: chocante, mórbido e também - ou talvez por isso mesmo - irresistível. Há uma palavra apenas a justificar o alerta de spoilers: incesto. Mas será que ele não é latente, omnipresente enquanto ameaça desde as primeiras páginas? Será que queremos fechar os olhos e acreditar num final feliz?
A história não nos reconcilia nem apazigua. Apenas expõe. A exposição tornará o ato mais recriminável. Contudo, pergunto-me quantas famílias não viverão com segredos destes que nunca foram revelados porque nunca houve uma oportunidade.
Tenho necessariamente de aplaudir Ian McEwan pela coragem de colocar o assunto em cima da mesa, ainda que sob os olhares de censura e desaprovação de muitos.

I hate this book. My iPod just kicked the bucket. I had about 45 minutes left.

I think this book killed my iPod.

(later...)

My iPod was plugged into the computer for a last ditch effort to charge when I blew a fuse in the kitchen while cooking both popcorn and heating a pizza.

And like Dr. Frankenstein's Monster, my iPod was resurrected. And it was good.

The book, unfortunately, was not.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH THOSE CHILDREN?

By the By--did 'ya notice there were no spoilers in this review? SUCKERS!

Pre mňa objav, nakoniec si ma kniha našla. Ale dlho mi ležala len tak v knižnici. McEwan je zrejme o. i. majstrom v tom, ako napísať text, v ktorom sa akoby nič podstatné nedeje, pričom sa stále niečo a mimoriadne vážne deje.

Tento citát sa mi páči: "Keď som mal štyri roky, veril som, že sny, ktoré mám v noci, nachystala mama. Ak sa ma, ako to niekedy robievala, ráno opýtala, čo sa mi snívalo, tak len preto, aby sa presvedčila, či dokážem povedať pravdu."

A zo série takýchto jednoduchých viet je vystavaný uchvacujúci príbeh.

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.

This was his first novel; it arrived with rave reviews, though to me it seems rather restrained and a little too short. It certainly has an air of unease about it, but I wouldn’t say actual menace; it is more sad and claustrophobic, and (for McEwan) only a little macabre.

Jack, his two sisters and much younger brother are orphaned when his father has an accident while concreting over the garden and shortly after the funeral his mother falls ill and dies. The children don’t as much decide to entomb her body in leftover cement as pretend that nothing has changed.

The story unfolds through the typical self-centred view of a 15-year-old boy, barely aware of the changing family dynamics where his sisters have taken over. The older Julie (for whom Jack has an obsession) has become the authoritarian parent while the younger Sue is more the passive partner and diarist, while 6-year-old Tom regresses to a baby. Over one summer, their world shrinks to the four of them and the unmentionable smell in the basement, but inevitably an outsider, Julie’s rather wet boyfriend Derek, becomes aware of what’s going on and their world collapses. It’s rather touching how Derek feels hurt and excluded from the dysfunctional and incestuous family, which seems to be the real reason he calls the authorities.

I quite liked this one - 3 1/2 stars anyway - but I’ve been reading a fair bit of McEwan recently and as I think of him as one of my favourite authors, I’m starting to wonder why I gave most of his works only 3-4 stars? Maybe my 5-star category is too exclusive!

simple and very quick to read, finished this within a day and a half.I found it very difficult to know what to feel for the majority of the book - shock and disgust seem somewhat unwelcome considering the circumstances laid out early on. The implied incestuous activity between the siblings makes one both uncomfortable yet oddly sympathetic. it is not out of sexual attraction that these actions occur, but with the pure necessity of being wanted; being held - simple actions which cannot be fulfilled by the tragically deceased parents. Julie's clear unease about sexual intimacy with her boyfriend and yet complete nonchalance about her sexual activity with her brother are not necessarily presented to be wrong, but are criticized and dismissed as "sick" by her boyfriend Derek. It is this which leads me to view Derek as a representation of society as a whole - their ideals, opinions of what constitutes "love", "beauty", and "success". With his flash car and annoyingly expensive clothes, Derek is a loathsome character who shows a complete lack of interest in anything other than himself. He is superficial. And whilst incest is obviously not socially accepted, McEwan deals with it sensitively. People perhaps do not think what drives siblings to an act which, to most people, the thought of is enough to cause deep repulsion. I am not condoning or promoting incest, but appreciate the delicacy with which McEwan has managed to examine it.

3.5*, rounded up. This is quite dark and odd, which I like, but it felt a little incomplete. It's a very short book, yet even so the narrative lacked some necessary urgency. Still, it's a compelling read, and McEwan is a wonderful stylist, though in this book he's more restrained and straightforward than in Atonement.