Cement Garden
Ian McEwan

Narrated By: Julian Rhind-Tutt

Duration: 4 hours and 27 minutes

What to expect

In the relentless summer heat, four abruptly orphaned children retreat into a shadowy, isolated world, and find their own strange and unsettling ways of fending for themselves...

Genre

Modern & contemporary fiction, Family life fiction, Narrative theme: Death, grief, loss, Narrative theme: Coming of age

Listen to a sample

A macabre but unforgettable tale

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

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

Darkly impressive

An extremely assured, technically adept and compelling piece of work