Nutshell: A Novel

"I approached Ian McEwan’s fetal Hamlet with the healthy skepticism of one who has sat through many dumb Shakespeare adaptations. But wit and self-awareness will go far in making improbable interpretations work. In Nutshell, we see a bookish mind at play. And it turns out that a fetal Hamlet — bound, listening while his mother and his uncle plot the death of his poet father, watching the inevitable event grow nearer, an extravagant and erring sprit confined in doubts and impotence — is actually just about right."