Ian McEwan - The Cement Garden - Book Review

The beauty of innocence corrupted utterly, this seems to encapsulate the world of McEwan's The Cement Garden. Tackling issues of; death, orphans, incest, masturbation and beyond - this hard hitting, short novel could not be more controversial if it tried. The reader is almost instantly made aware that something is amiss but the depth of the perversity is not fully revealed until the closing pages of the book.

In an isolated world without parents, beyond rules, void of morals, stripped down to nothing but raw human instincts - survival and replication - how would 3 children cope? That is what The Cement Garden explored. The novel is beautifully constructed, both moving and shocking in equal measure. The central character is clearly suffering mentally, however, this does not prevent the reader from relating to them, something which must have taken much of McEwan's significant writing skill to achieve.

Disturbing, profound, masterful, a plethora of adjectives come to mind. The Cement Garden gets a Great Book Guide score of 91% - sheer brilliance.