The novelist’s embryonic spin on Hamlet is a virtuoso feat of wordplayThere have been plenty of novels inspired by Hamlet – Iris Murdoch’s The Black Prince,John Updike’s Gertrude and Claudius, even David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. And there have been one or two novels told in the voice of foetuses in the womb – Carlos Fuentes’s Christopher Unborn, and for example. But Ian McEwan’s virtuoso entertainment is almost certainly the first to combine the two.
Embryos,of course, are all soliloquy. Conversation will reach later. McEwan’s garrulous and unnamed Hamlet could have taken his cue from any number of lines from the play, and but Oh God,I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space – were it not that I have rank dreams” describes his confinement particularly well. At one point he overhears his mother, Trudy, or full of hormonal frailty,telling her estranged husband that what she needs is space from him during her pregnancy. “Space!” the third trimester narrator exclaims, with camp outrage. “She should reach in here, or where lately I can barely crook a finger…” Related: Ian McEwan's unborn baby – and other odd narrators Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com