Stylistically though, The Cement Garden doesn’t feel as visceral as many later books, and that’s in part due to the narration and the almost hallucinatory quality that the novel holds. Incidentally, I’ve just discovered that Paul Schrader directed an adaptation of Comfort in 1991 and I shall be looking this up forthwith. While Comfort dealt with Sado-Masochism and was startlingly unpleasant, it really doesn’t hold a candle to the preceding novel, which is both far more sordid and a far superior read. Followed by The Comfort of Strangers, another intensely uncomfortable novel, the Cement Garden set a high standard of both perversion and style that his career has mostly met. The Cement Garden was his first full length book, and, for a debut, stirred up a huge controversy. In 1978 McEwan was an almost completely unheard of British Author.

The plot is virtually identical in both novel and film, and there are major spoilers below, as it’s impossible to talk about either the book or the film without addressing the driving force of the plot. Yet in 1993 Andrew Birkin (remember that last name, it’ll be important later) took a stab at it, and turned in a haunting, lyrical, sombre little film that wasn’t afraid to look at the inherent unpleasantness of the novel’s plot.

Having said that, I never for the life of me thought that anyone would be nuts enough, given it’s intensely controversial subject matter, to even attempt to adapt it for the screen. A haunting dreamlike novel, with a consummately unreliable narrator, it is both celebrated and reviled in equal measure. Ian McEwan’s novella The Cement Garden was a novel that I read at school, and stuck with me for much longer afterwards. Given the content of this mega-review, I’ll return it only slightly soiled. Before I start, I’d like to thank Xi for the use of his excellent Book to Movie idea.

The cement garden ending