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    The Cement Garden

    Author Ian McEwan
    Look inside
    Paperback
    $15.00 US
    Knopf | Vintage
    On sale Jan 13, 1994 | 160 Pages | 9780679750185
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    This tour de force of psychological unease excavates the ruins of childhood and uncovers things that most adults have spent a lifetime forgetting--or denying.

    First the father dies, then the mother. Four children are left alone in a house that looks like a castle stranded among grim high-rises. Free of supervision, free of restraint, they can do and be anything, as long as the house's secret is kept.

    Out of blasphemous wishes and hair-raising games, McEwan constructs a novel that is all the more chilling for its offhand approach to the unspeakable.

    "A master of menace.... The banality of evil fascinates McEwan [and] he seems anxious to identify the cracked steps, the crucibles of experience that jolt individuals, for better or worse, out of their mortal skins."
    --Los Angeles Times Book Review
    © Annalena McAfee
    IAN MCEWAN is the critically acclaimed author of nineteen novels and two short story collections. His first published work, a collection of short stories, First Love, Last Rites, won the Somerset Maugham Award. His novels include The Child in Time, which won the 1987 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award; The Cement Garden; Enduring Love; Amsterdam, which won the 1998 Booker Prize; Atonement; Saturday; On Chesil Beach; Solar; Sweet Tooth; The Children Act; Nutshell; and Machines Like Me, which was a number-one bestseller. Atonement, Enduring Love, The Children Act and On Chesil Beach have all been adapted for the big screen.

    ianmcewan.com View titles by Ian McEwan
    "A shocking book, morbid, full of repellant imagery—and irresistibly readable.... The effect achieved by McEwan's quiet, precise and sensuous touch is that of magic realism—a transfiguration of the ordinary that has far stronger retinal and visceral impact than the flabby surrealism of so many experimental novels." —New York Review of Books

    “Possesses the suspense and chilling impact of Lord of the Flies.” —Washington Post Book World

    “Darkly impressive.” —The Times

    “A superb achievement: his prose has instant, lucid beauty and his narrative voice has a perfect poise and certainty. His account of deprivation and survival is marvellously sure, and the imaginative alignment of his story is exactly right.” —Tom Paulin

    “Marvellously creates the atmosphere of youngsters given that instant adulthood they all crave, where the ordinary takes on a mysterious glow and the extraordinary seems rather commonplace. It is difficult to fault the writing or the construction of this eerie fable.” —Sunday Times

    "His writing is exact, tender, funny, voluptuous, disturbing." —The Times

    "The Maestro." —New Statesman

    "McEwan has—a style and a vision of life of his own...No one interested in the state and mood of contemporary Britain can afford not to read him." —John Fowles

    "A sparkling and adventurous writer." —Dennis Potter

    About

    This tour de force of psychological unease excavates the ruins of childhood and uncovers things that most adults have spent a lifetime forgetting--or denying.

    First the father dies, then the mother. Four children are left alone in a house that looks like a castle stranded among grim high-rises. Free of supervision, free of restraint, they can do and be anything, as long as the house's secret is kept.

    Out of blasphemous wishes and hair-raising games, McEwan constructs a novel that is all the more chilling for its offhand approach to the unspeakable.

    "A master of menace.... The banality of evil fascinates McEwan [and] he seems anxious to identify the cracked steps, the crucibles of experience that jolt individuals, for better or worse, out of their mortal skins."
    --Los Angeles Times Book Review

    Author

    © Annalena McAfee
    IAN MCEWAN is the critically acclaimed author of nineteen novels and two short story collections. His first published work, a collection of short stories, First Love, Last Rites, won the Somerset Maugham Award. His novels include The Child in Time, which won the 1987 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award; The Cement Garden; Enduring Love; Amsterdam, which won the 1998 Booker Prize; Atonement; Saturday; On Chesil Beach; Solar; Sweet Tooth; The Children Act; Nutshell; and Machines Like Me, which was a number-one bestseller. Atonement, Enduring Love, The Children Act and On Chesil Beach have all been adapted for the big screen.

    ianmcewan.com View titles by Ian McEwan

    Praise

    "A shocking book, morbid, full of repellant imagery—and irresistibly readable.... The effect achieved by McEwan's quiet, precise and sensuous touch is that of magic realism—a transfiguration of the ordinary that has far stronger retinal and visceral impact than the flabby surrealism of so many experimental novels." —New York Review of Books

    “Possesses the suspense and chilling impact of Lord of the Flies.” —Washington Post Book World

    “Darkly impressive.” —The Times

    “A superb achievement: his prose has instant, lucid beauty and his narrative voice has a perfect poise and certainty. His account of deprivation and survival is marvellously sure, and the imaginative alignment of his story is exactly right.” —Tom Paulin

    “Marvellously creates the atmosphere of youngsters given that instant adulthood they all crave, where the ordinary takes on a mysterious glow and the extraordinary seems rather commonplace. It is difficult to fault the writing or the construction of this eerie fable.” —Sunday Times

    "His writing is exact, tender, funny, voluptuous, disturbing." —The Times

    "The Maestro." —New Statesman

    "McEwan has—a style and a vision of life of his own...No one interested in the state and mood of contemporary Britain can afford not to read him." —John Fowles

    "A sparkling and adventurous writer." —Dennis Potter

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