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Reviewed by: Heather
Rating: 3/10
Genre: Fiction
153 pages/1978
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The Cement Garden
by
Ian McEwan
This book was terrible. After finishing it, I wished that I had never started reading it. Earlier this year I read Atonement by the same author. I enjoyed it and after I read it I decided to request some books by Ian McEwan at the library. I wish I hadn't. I would not recommend this book to anyone.
The main character is a fourteen-year-old boy. His name is Jack. The story begins with him telling about his father's death. His father had already had a heart attack. This was why he could no longer keep up the garden. When a man came selling cement, he bought a lot, planning to fill in the yard with cement so that there would be no need to work on the garden. Jack was helping his father with the cement, but then he went to the bathroom to masturbate. While there, his father had another heart attack. This time he died. Jack's mother is also very unhealthy. She is sick for a while. She then dies at home in her bed. Jack and his three siblings do not want to be separated, so they don't tell anyone about her death. This leaves them with the problem of her burial. They attempt to dispose of her body rather unsuccessfully.
This was a book where I did not care about the characters. Although characters in many books are far from perfect, they usually have redeeming characteristics. These characters did not. There was also not enough information given about the characters other than Jack for them to seem like real people. Jack doesn't care very much about the people around him and he masturbates a lot of the time.
There were some things in this book that made me curious enough to keep reading, but in the end, I wish I hadn't bothered.
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