The Cement Garden

McEwan's first novel is about a perverse family in which the children bury their mother in cement and the eldest son calmly deflowers his sister while another sibling looks on. Many of the themes of McEwan's fiction are present here: the grotesque black comedy, the pervasiveness of evil, the twisted eroticism, and the importance of the mundane details of everyday life. Copyright (C) Muze Inc. 2005. For personal use only. All rights reserved.