Ian McEwan's unborn baby – and other strange narrators

Nutshell, his forthcoming novel, is told from inside a mother’s womb. It’s a strikingly unusual point of view – do any others outdo it for oddness?

There’s the narrator of Conversations With a Cupboard Man, who was treated as a baby until the age of 17; Serena Frome, the spy from Sweet Tooth; or Joe Rose, the narrator of Enduring Love, who witnesses a deadly ballooning accident. Ian McEwan has a history of intriguing, weird or disturbing first-person narrators, but they have nothing on his latest in Nutshell, due out in September: the narrator is a baby, still in the womb.

“So here I am, upside down in a woman. Arms patiently crossed, waiting, waiting and wondering who I’m in, what I’m in for,” it opens. In a brief summary on his publisher’s website, the plot of the novel is revealed: “Trudy has betrayed her husband, John. She’s still in the marital home – a dilapidated, priceless London townhouse – but John’s not here. Instead, she’s with his brother, the profoundly banal Claude, and the two of them have a plan. But there is a witness to their plot: the inquisitive, nine-month-old resident of Trudy’s womb.”

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