∎ Libro The Cement Garden Ian McEwan 9780099468387 Books

The Cement Garden Ian McEwan 9780099468387 Books

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The Cement Garden Ian McEwan 9780099468387 Books

Review: The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan. 4 Stars 11/17/2018

Ian McEwan is a great writer and in this short story he used many incest issues and scenes that I found it disturbing at times. The family consisted of two parents and four children, Julie age seventeen, Jack age fifteen, Sue age thirteen, and Tom age six.
Jack is the one narrating the story.

The family was barely functional and was struggling to find some kind of emotional balance. The father soon dies of a heart attack and the mother is sickly and she too dies. They did have a funeral for their father but when their mother died soon after they had to decide if they should have reported it but feared being separated and sent to foster homes. Julie and Jack decided to bury their mother in a bed of cement in the cellar.

It was an unstable situation where Tom reverts to being a clinging baby and insists to be dressed as a girl. Than Sue withdraws to her room where she reads and writes in her diary. However, Jack becomes confused because he is maturing sexually and is drawn to his older sister for satisfaction and she doesn’t discourage him. Plus, Julie is the one above the others and becomes easy flexible with rules, she is an athletic beauty to whom the others look up to.

There were incest scenes even before the parents died. The children had no one to guide them and they continued to live in the rundown area of the town in a ramshackle old house.


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The Cement Garden Ian McEwan 9780099468387 Books Reviews

It is hard not to like anything written by Ian McEwan. He's a master story teller. The Cement Garden is about four children who, having lost their parents about the same time, are left alone to to take care of themselves. Thus, unsupervised they gradually succumb to their lower instincts and forget the norms of behavior as taught by their parents. This transformation is so gradual and so skillfully presented by McEwan that we, the readers, find ourselves at a loss when we reach the macabre ending. How did we get to this point? He takes us step by step through the daily lives of these children. Though each child or teen is locked in his or her own world, together they form a subculture of their own which is in total contrast with the one outside of their isolated house. One wonders, however if the foundation of this breakdown was not already laid down by the parents before they each died by different natural causes. When the father set the first rock in the garden.
This short novel, the author's first written some thirty years ago, is a brief, but provocative, look at how a family of teens and a small brother cope, or do not cope, with the death of both parents within a short time period. The family of Julie, Jack, Sue, and Tom, ages 17, 15, 13, and 6, was barely functional, but now they are forced to make decisions and interact in ways which cannot withstand rational scrutiny but do result in them drawing together to some degree.

Julie and Jack are central to this story. Jack, the narrator, was helping his father mix concrete for a garden path when he died from over exertion. But Julie is the driving force in this drama. She is a lithesome, athletic beauty to whom the others gravitate. She and Jack, fearful of nebulous authorities, decide that their mother, her death occurring after weeks of being confined to bed, must be concealed in a bed of concrete in the cellar.

It is an unstable situation; most of them are struggling to find some sort of emotional balance. Young Tom reverts to being a clinging baby and insists on being dressed as a girl; Sue withdraws to her room where she reads and writes in her diary; and Jack, maturing sexually, finds himself increasingly drawn to his older sister, which she does little to discourage. The author, despite the abnormalities, seems to be generally sympathetic towards the efforts of these kids to survive, but there is a pervasive sense that all of the various cracks in their arrangement will inevitably result in its collapse.
Sometimes short fiction is the best fiction and I think it's the mark of a great writer when they can capture a world and the lives within that world in the space of less than 200 pages. Clocking in at 152 pages The Cement Garden is on the border between long short story or short novel but either way it's top quality writing.
An English family living in the rundown part of town lose their father to a heart attack then their mother to sickness. The children hide their newly orphaned status and try to continue life as best they can. They experience all the usual trials of puberty and growing up with no guidance as they idle away the days in their ramshackle old house. Dark undercurrents of sexuality, incest and loss bubble away beneath the surface of this book and the author portrays what life is like when you have no-one very well.
Easily read in a single sitting this book will haunt you for weeks afterwards.
Review The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan. 4 Stars 11/17/2018

Ian McEwan is a great writer and in this short story he used many incest issues and scenes that I found it disturbing at times. The family consisted of two parents and four children, Julie age seventeen, Jack age fifteen, Sue age thirteen, and Tom age six.
Jack is the one narrating the story.

The family was barely functional and was struggling to find some kind of emotional balance. The father soon dies of a heart attack and the mother is sickly and she too dies. They did have a funeral for their father but when their mother died soon after they had to decide if they should have reported it but feared being separated and sent to foster homes. Julie and Jack decided to bury their mother in a bed of cement in the cellar.

It was an unstable situation where Tom reverts to being a clinging baby and insists to be dressed as a girl. Than Sue withdraws to her room where she reads and writes in her diary. However, Jack becomes confused because he is maturing sexually and is drawn to his older sister for satisfaction and she doesn’t discourage him. Plus, Julie is the one above the others and becomes easy flexible with rules, she is an athletic beauty to whom the others look up to.

There were incest scenes even before the parents died. The children had no one to guide them and they continued to live in the rundown area of the town in a ramshackle old house.