The Cement Garden

by Ian McEwan

Book Overview

In this "irresistibly readable" (New York Review of Books) tour de force of psychological unease, the Booker Prize winner and bestselling author of Atonement excavates the ruins of childhood and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679750185
• Release Date: January 1994
• Publisher: Anchor
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 0.4" x 5.2"

Customer Reviews

Good Read

I did enjoy this book even though it seemed a little slow. This book took me longer to read than normal. I would recommend if you like more twisted novels.

Childhood and Early Sorrow

If Flannery O'Conner and Edgar Alan Poe had had a child who became a writer after studying in England, he might have written THE CEMENT GARDEN. Ian McEwan's first novel takes the reader to the dark side of human nature, or more specifically, to the basement of a house in London where four children decide to bury their dead mother in cement "to keep the family together." If this plot line were not enough, Mr. McEwan adds a touch of cross-dressing (male to female) and incest in this macabre but most compelling tale. The good news or bad news-- depending on how much of the grotesque in fiction you prefer-- is that Mr. McEwan of course has mellowed a bit in middle age. But as his legions of fans know, his characters still remain acquainted with the night. Mr. McEwan remains one of the best authors currently writing in English.

Gets under your skin

The material is so dark, so nonchalantly sinister, that one would expect it to be difficult to read. On the contrary, because McEwan is so brilliantly adept with character, the book reads like a page-turner. This is an amazing feat. McEwan shows us all of the narcissism and moral lapses of troubled teenagers, yet still somehow makes them lovable. Jack, Julie, Sue, and Tom are some of the most vividly rendered characters in fiction. Though McEwan's prose continued to improve in the years after THE CEMENT GARDEN, culminating with ATONEMENT, he had this basic and phenomenal ability even with his first book. It's fascinating to read such a talented debut after seeing his other works....

The Psychological Meaning of Social Normalcy

THE CEMENT GARDEN is the gripping story of a small family, isolated from society, and struggling with events for which society maintains strict rules. It is a well-crafted reflection on society and normalcy. It is technically well-written, poetic and confident in tone, a superb psychological portrait.Four children, who previously lost their father, now tend their ailing mother, whom they will soon lose as well. Two boys and two girls (two young and two teenaged), they attend school as normal, but the family has always been isolated. The mother hardly let them leave the house when she was alive, so they do not know how to handle her body now that she's died, and take it to the basement. As a subplot, the older boy and girl explore sexuality with each other, in a candid scene.Suprisingly, we are not bothered by these activities as such. McEwan's psychological portraits are convincing, and his characters seem entirely normal. His writing skill is evident when one realizes the sympathy with which these four characters are drawn.The novel's tension comes unexpectedly from a banal source: The older girl has a boyfriend, a conventional person, but McEwan has convinced us the family is normal, so to us, the boyfriend is an outsider. How will the boyfriend act? Will he discover the secret? If so, will he reveal it? Will he become an insider, will he clean up the mess and help the four become legitimate, will he blackmail them, or will he tell society and let them be punished as normal? If the latter, will society punish them harshly?At the end, one wonders how horrible the youth really were, even if they lived outside social norms. What is the line between innocently mistaken and socially unacceptable? The novel is an excellent exploration of this question, and the inquisitive reader may judge this matter for themself.A minor complaint: I have heard the movie omits the book's last paragraph, which I think was wise. The author might have witheld the explicit conclusion, forcing the reader to guess what might happen. This does not detract from the book's quality in any way, nor the reader's ability to consider the matter in their own mind, on their own.

An amasing novel about unusual childhood in one hot summer

I am amased by the contemporary British fiction, but Ian McEwan has won my heart completely with his novels. I like the novels I have been able to get hold on to but I love the Cement garden. It is a magnificent novel about four children trying to adjust to the situation so unusual, unfamiliar and terrifying to them. They have no idea how to act, because their parents (especially father) have been extremely protective and have not communicated normally with the outer world. In this extreme situation they act as they think is right, and frankly, I would have done the same in the same situation. I also love Ian McEwan's style--it is so tense that it is impossible to put the book away, and the descriptions are amasing. The description of the summer was so convincing that while reading I started to feel so hot it was impossible to breathe. I like the novel not only because of the style but because of the way it made me feel. I felt extreme closeness with the children, and it almost made me a part of the family.

It's a 1st-person, urban, erotic Lord of the Flies!

"I did not kill my father," this slim novel begins, "but I sometimes felt I had helped him on his way." Soon the mother is dead as well, and four children are left to fend for themselves in a secluded house in a dying part of the city.There's Julie, the eldest, a ripe & willful beauty who's almost a woman; there's Jack, the narrator, a boy bewildered by his growing body & appetites; there's Sue, bookish & ever-observant; and then there's Tom, the baby of the family, who actually seems to get younger, regressing as the days go by. These four form an uneasy family, slowly learning to be self-sufficient in this strangely apocalyptic setting. But an intruder in the form of Julie's new boyfriend threatens their fragile stasis by asking too many questions. How long have the four of them been alone? And just what is buried under the crumbling pile of cement in the basement? This book has been mistakenly marketed as a horror novel; it's horrific, sure, but not as horrible as the pulp that defines the genre. What makes it particularly good is its characters, the children who are both recognizably sympathetic and exotically extraordinary. Ian McEwan has created a taut & provocative thriller written in pitch-perfect and stripped-down prose. Beyond being a macabre morality tale, The Cement Garden is a psychological-suspense yarn, a perceptive portrayal of adolescence that will keep you riveted up to the final, climactic scene in an upstairs bedroom.