[.ca] The Cement Garden (ISBN 0099755114)

Family Life:
A friend recommended this book to me via email while I was on holidays in London. I read it while riding on the Northern Line, and I cannot think of a more suitable setting for this grimy little fable. McEwan is an astonishing writer. Despite the salaciousness of the subject matter, McEwan rarely panders to a reader's base desires. The events in the novel seem unavoidable. McEwan takes a matter-of-fact approach to the pollution that overtakes Jack and his family and succeeds in telling his story.

first-rate nightmare:
This book will hanunt you: it is horrible and utterly believable, every word dripping with the meaninglessness of life and depression and confusion. THe plot is quite basic: siblings trying to keep a family together, but its descent into chaos is a chilling addition to fine literature. It is so vivid that you can smell it. TO reveal more would spoil the readers' discovery of the plot. While I prefer to stick to older classics, this one is truly worth the read. The atmostphere is so realistic and painful, so bleak, which reflects a writing style that is absolutely masterful. Recommended, but not for the squeamish.

Thankfully this story is short.:
This is a sickening story told from the prospective of a teenage boy who doesn't like his father much. His father dies. Than his mother dies. He and his older sister decide to encase the mom's body in cement. They also have a younger brother and sister who they will look after. The story-teller is stupid, pimple-faced, and smelly(never bathes). He spends a lot of time masturbating and thinking about his sister who he eventually has sex with.

Plot-driven novella:
"The Cement Garden" is one of the early novellas by Ian McEwan, a winner of the 1998 Booker Prize for his novel "Amsterdam". Perhaps there is a reason why this book is not as popular as it might be, given the later-day success of this writer, as indicated by the awards. "The Cement Garden" is a plot-driven story with a great potential which nevertheless has never been exploited. The family of a marriage with four children falls apart when both parents suddenly die. Even here, in the very beginning of the book the storyline is unconvincing. After the father dies from stroke, the mother follows him in short order, apparently from incurable illness. In the very first chapter, the very first page even, when this information is passed to the reader - I wish the author had given some more thought to the actual events. The coincidence of their passing away is too artificial for my liking. Even the dysfunctionality of the family does not ring true. Of four children, only one appears to be sane, and what exactly is the probability that out of three teenagers and one toddler - one will turn out to be an early transvestite, and two others incestuous? The plot itself was bland, everything might be intuited right away. If only there was more to this book that the aforementioned storyline, that wouldn't hurt. Sadly, it isn't the case, as McEwan hints at the upcoming events in a bold fashion. The potential of the tale was not explored, and McEwan seemed to hesitate as to the actual course of the story. Circling around the seemingly unexpected solution to the situation the four children found themselves in, McEwan never dared deliver what he undoubtedly wanted to. This novel was hailed as the second Lord of the Flies (originally written by William Golding), and it just might have been, but wasn't, when all is said and done. In the writing itself, there is no hint that the author would one day win the Booker Prize. Having just closed the last page I have not retained any memory of anything original to the writing style of McEwan. All faults of this book combined together give an impression of a forced work, where everything seems to be stretched and artificial.

A 20th Century classic:
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.