"A new and ominous drumbeat"

Ian McEwan wrote a novel entitled Nutshell. An unborn child realizes that his mother, Trudy, is plotting to murder his father, John. She has a co-conspirator who is none other than the child's uncle, Claude. Sounds familiar?

In this insane take on Hamlet, we must first acquaint ourselves with the mother. She doesn't listen to music very much, but is certainly fond of podcasts. One imagines our narrator-fetus entering a world of jingles. “I even tolerate the BBC world service and its puerile blasts of synthetic trumpets and xylophone […].” (Chapter One, p. 4).

Our narrator-fetus is tormented by his mother's murderous intentions. But even amid the fear and chaos, unidentified music of the spontaneous kind can signify unity and love. Quite late in the story, our narrator finds solace in the “tuneful humming” of his mother (Chapter Seventeen, p. 161). The combined pleasures of sound and warmth (she is in the shower) leads our narrator to speculate on a phenomenon he has never experienced, color. The elation gives him a bright outlook on the world which he sees as “golden”. It’s interesting to note how one set of frequencies leads to another.

He returns to music as he muses on the delights that await him. At that particular moment, the joy of listening to Bach is on par with wine tasting, reading, sea-side promenades and moonlight romances. The paragraph ends on another musical note. As Trudy dries herself with a towel, the ensuing dizziness does not break the spell: “I have the impression of singing in my head. Choirs of angels!” (p. 162).

On the next page, (p. 163) our fetus-narrator has sobered up. He strikes a melancholy mood as he observes how the present is fleeting, how ordinary moments drift by our consciousness. In this litany of disappearing familiar impressions, “a short burst of birdsong” concludes a list which includes an everyday gesture, the sound made by a kitchen item, the touch of a fabric, fine weather and the bustle of the city.  In the last paragraph of the chapter, the narrator recognizes that even as he enjoys the present moment with his mother, he cannot help but feel nostalgic. In other words, music has set us up for a heartbreaking realization.

But music is also internal. And a woman's poise can be assimilated to a musical instrument. It can signal a dangerous change of attitude in the narrator's mother. When John introduces his latest signed poet, the owl poet, Trudy’s heartbeat signals the rise of negative emotions: “Unreasonable thoughts are disrupting Trudy’s pulse, a new and ominous drumbeat […] speaks of possession, anger, jealousy” (Chapter Seven, p. 63). John introduces the poet as Elodie. Our narrator-fetus likens her voice to an “oboe, slightly cracked, with a quack on the vowels” (p. 65).

Trudy has remained silent through the introductions and Claude’s small talk. The tension is at its climax and the narrator uses another musical image as he awaits Trudy’s first words in the conversation: “I conjure a taut piano wire waiting for its sudden felt hammer.” (p. 66). The image reveals the anatomy of the instrument, which allows for a more threatening image. There will be an impact and the resulting sound will be significantly louder than if it were perceived from a distance. The image also reminds us of the condition of the narrator, who hears, feels and tries to understand situations from inside the womb.

McEwan, Ian, Nutshell, Vintage, Penguin, 2017