British Author Ian McEwan's "NUTSHELL" is an Embryo's Analytical Outlook on Life

Ian McEwan (b. UK 1948) is one of the most celebrated and contemporary creative writers.  He's been nominated for the Man Booker 6 times, winning it for "Amsterdam" ('98) & received the Sommerset Maugham Award for his short story collection "First Love, Last Rites" ('75.)  His prolific body of works vary greatly in style & substance from one to the next.  This novel has a newbie hero who is quite an intellectual,  He has a sardonic wit & sagacious insights into the world to which he has yet to enter.  And yet, he's capable of perceiving the world that envelops his mother from her womb.  He tells us "The womb, or this womb, isn't such a bad place."  But, something is rotten in the state of Denmark.  The nameless, unborn reminds me of Stewie from the TV sitcom "Family Guy."  A precocious pipsqueak who converses to us from mom's uterus.  He loves his mom & shares her taste for fine wine.  He's biding time by talking to himself & to the reader.  "I want my life first, my due, my infinitesimal slice of endless time." A "Hamlet" storyline is revealed; the mother & uncle plotting to kill his corporeal father.  This causes quite a ruckus & numerous rebellious kicks to his mother.  "Don't let your incestuous uncle & mother poison your father.  Don't waste your precious days idle and inverted.  Get born & act!"  At first, I was cynical of McEwan's clever contrivance "Nutshell."  At inception, I thought the gimmick a fickle trick.  But I grew to love the "Stewie" fetus, the fiendish Hamlet plot and found myself reading with mounting anticipation.  To thine own self be true… I say to you, McEwan hit "Nutshell" out of the ballpark.