![]() ![]() The Oedipal coincidence: acne-infested, broody narrator Jack, second oldest of four children, has his first ejaculation just as his frail father drops dead outside-father has been surrounding their English urban house with an even plane of concrete to cover the dirt and grass. ![]() Still, except for one aggressively Oedipal coincidence and an incestuous finale, The Cement Garden's adolescent sensibility works, on its own terms, quietly and stunningly. ![]() Here he returns to some of the adolescent preoccupations that peeked through the stories-masturbation, sibling sex-and, though all this is handled with impeccable taste and invested with authentic bitter-sweetness, one longs for adult material to match the fully matured style. What McEwan writes is perhaps less cause for dancing in the streets. There can be nothing but praise for how Ian McEwan writes: in his short stories (First Love, Last Rites, 1975) and in this new novella, he glories in the secret of how uninflected, almost unbearably lean, plain prose can grip, can scream without a single exclamation point. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |