Nutshell: A Novel

Nutshell by Ian McEwan is a reinterpretation of the classic William Shakespeare play Hamlet as told by a fetus.

As the novel opens, the narrator who is the unborn child living in Trudy’s abdomen, learns of his mother and his uncle Claude’s plan to kill his father, John Cairncross. John is Trudy’s estranged husband and the father of her unborn child. The narrator is unnervingly intelligent, much more so than most fully-grown people around him. He is driven mad by the thought of Trudy and Claude’s plan. Although he has never met his father, he still has a certain level of respect for the man.

The narrator gains his understanding of the outside world through conversations that he can hear as well as Trudy’s biological responses to various occurrences, so deeply attuned are they as mother and son. In fact, the narrator is subjected to all of his mother’s bodily functions; unfortunately for him, this includes her sexual escapades with Claude. At one point in the book, the narrator attempts to hang himself with his own umbilical cord.



The narrator takes an instant dislike to Claude, whom he feels is betraying his father by carrying on an affair with Trudy. Luckily, the narrator can keep close tabs on the two as their diabolic plan unfolds, although, given his status as a fetus, there is not much he can do to deter them.

After overhearing a conversation between Trudy and Claude, the narrator learns that the two are planning to poison John by putting anti-freeze in one of his smoothies. In order to cover their tracks, they are planning to plant items in his car that would lead the police to believe John had committed suicide, and to pose as John at the smoothie shop by wearing his hat, making potential investigators believe that John had bought the smoothie himself.

Before they can bring their plan to fruition, John shows up at the house with a friend of his who is a poet and seems to also be his new girlfriend. He confronts Trudy and Claude, telling them that he knows all about their affair and requesting that they vacate the property so that he may regain ownership and move back in. Claude and Trudy had been planning to sell the million-dollar home after they had offed John, and so they refuse to let him take it over.



The next day, John returns to the house, determined to reclaim it from his wife and brother. Claude and Trudy whip him up a smoothie spiked with poison and convince him to drink it. Thrilled that they have managed to pull the plan off, they wait to hear something of John’s condition. Shortly after John leaves, Trudy receives a call from the police informing her that her husband is dead.

Although this was the anticipated effect of the poison, Trudy can’t get past her feelings of guilt at having killed her husband. For Claude’s sake, she tries to act cold and uncaring, but eventually, it all becomes too much and she breaks down. Claude tries to comfort her and bring her to her senses, telling her that the only thing to do now is to move forward; they have to stay strong. Together they will be rich, he says. Apart, they will both be poor and imprisoned.

The police launch an investigation into John’s death, and Trudy and Claude soon receive a visit from the Chief Inspector, seeking to question the pair. The two of them band together, constructing a tale about John’s struggle with depression, and how they imagine he must have succumbed to his own demons and committed suicide. The Chief Inspector wonders aloud why, when the police examined the crime scene, there were no fingerprints on the anti-freeze bottle, not even those belonging to John. How did he poison himself with anti-freeze without touching the bottle?



Claude and Trudy say that John probably wore gloves when he handled the bottle of anti-freeze. The Inspector pretends to go along with their story for a while, but then she reveals a key piece of evidence that changes everything. She has John’s gloves in her hands, and she tells Trudy and Claude that the gloves happen to be full of spiders. Because of this, John could not have actually worn the gloves when he poisoned his own smoothie.

Claude and Trudy start to freak out, knowing that they are the Chief Inspector’s prime suspects. They make plans to flee the country to escape persecution for their crimes. It is at this exact moment that the narrator decides he wants to be born. Claude hesitates between staying for the birth of the child and leaving Trudy behind. Ultimately, he decides to stay and helps with the birth. The narrator is born and the police arrive, just in time to arrest Claude and Trudy.