McEwan made his debut in 1975 with "First Love, Last Rites", a collection of short stories. His opening story dealt with a taboo subject. In this 1978 stark, shocking debut novel the taboo is breached again. This perfectly-plotted book is rich on atmosphere, with plenty of isolation and estrangement, decline and decay and on bringing characters alive. Towards the end of a hot and dry summer holiday this intriguing novel ends when cars with revolving blue lights screech to a halt.
The big house with garden and spacious cellar stands alone in an area bulldozed flat to make way for a road that was never built. It houses a family of six, of which first the father, then the mother die. The children (16, 14, 12 and 5) are alone now and decide to bury Mother in concrete in an army sheet metal suitcase in the basement. The means: the remains of 15 bags of cement and a load of sand their late Father bought to realize his weird dream garden. The motive: they have no relatives and although rather prickly, even hostile, they do not fancy being cared for in foster families or orphanages.
What follows is pure drama, because each child reacts in his/her own way to the new reality. For Jack, now 15, time seems to stand still. He is the storyteller when he does not sleep or masturbate, and his lack of personal hygiene matches the kitchen's smelly state. Tom, now 6, goes back in time, wants to be a girl, then a baby with sister Julie, now 17 as his mother. Sue, now 13, starts and keeps a diary.
One day, Julie finally orders a housecleaning and introduces her siblings to Derek (23), a smart, rich snooker player. At the end of a suffocating summer which the quartet survived without a plan for the future, the taboo is finally broken and consumed to the sound and rhythm of Derek's sledgehammer from the cellar... Brr.
