The body within the body: Ian McEwan’s creation of a new world in Nutshell

Abstract

Abstract This article looks at Ian McEwan’s latest novel, Nutshell, as a great innovative contribution to narrative art. As far as its basic plot is concerned, it looks like crime fiction with Shakespearean resonances, but the choice of an unborn child as narrator and the consistent perspective from within the body of a heavily pregnant woman result in the disclosure and exploration of an entirely new world. Aspects investigated are the novel’s narrative situation, its relation to Shakespeare’s Hamlet as a reference text, the use of quotations and allusions and the representation of bodily processes and the relation between the I-narrator and the author. The ethical substance of the work is shown to be generated by its specific narrative form.