Boek 3 The cement garden - Ian McEwan. Level
The book is about 4 children with their parents. They live in a big house, the other houses in the street are demolished to make space for a highway. They’ve got no friends or family. Their father likes to garden but after a heart attack it was to haevy for him. He decides to buy cement for yhe garden, while he’s working on it he gets another heart attack and dies. After his death their mother gets very ill. Three days after Jacks birthday she dies to. The children are afraid to be split up if they tell anybody so they decide to bury her in a tunk full of cement, down in the cellar. After their mother had died Tom starts to act like a baby-girl and Jack stops washing himself and stops changing his clothes. The whole summerholiday they act just normal, until Julie takes her friend home, Derek. He finds out that their mother is burried in the cement trunk. He catces Julie and Jack making love and he goes to the cellar, smashing up the cement trunk. He goes to the police to tell them about it. * Een gedeelte van het dagboek van de hoofdpersoon. I wrote it through the eyes of Jack he is 14 or 15 years old. “Dear Mum. Today you’ve died. We’ve covered your body with a sheet. As we were sitting in the garden we decided not to tell anybody. That meant we had to get rid of your body by oureselfs. I love you Mum I didn’t want this to happen. Anyway we decided to burry you in cement in the cellar. I really wanted a beautiful funeral, but I don’t want us to be split up. If we tell anybody about you we have to go to seperate familie’s or fosterhomes. In a couple of days the summerholiday starts no one will ever notice. We swore not to tell anybody. For Tom it’s very hard to understand that you’re dead. We closed your bedroom but he still wants to go in there, all the time. We told him that you are sleeping and that he may not wake you up.”
* Een personage die me niet aansprak. His name is Derek. He shows up at the end of the story. He is Julie’s boyfriend and he wants to boss people around and be traeted like a king. “As soon as Derek came into the room Sue dropped her magazine and ran into the kitchen to make him a cup of tea. She treated him like a filmstar. He walked about with his coat folded in a neat sqaure looking for a place to put it down and Sue watched him from the doorway like a frightened rabbit.” He also wants to be part of the familie, but nobody want that. “I said, ‘Do you know were Mum is now?’ Tom stared up at the ceilling and said, ‘In the cellar.’ ‘What o you mean?’ I whispered. ‘In the cellar. In the trunk under all that stuff.’ ‘Who told you that?’ ‘Derek said. He said you put her in there.’” “when her clothes were between us in a small pile on the bed, she nodded toward Tom and said, ‘What do ypu think of him? Don’t you think he’s happy?’ I said ‘yes’ and told her what he told me. Julie opened her mouth wide in pretend surprise. ‘Derek’s known for ages. We haven’t been very good at keeping it a secret. What upsets him is that we don’t let him in on it.’ She titterd into her hand. ‘He feels left out when we go on telling him it’s a dog.’ She moved a little closer to me and wrapped her arms around her body. ‘He wants to be one of the family, you know, big smart daddy. He’s getting on my nerves.’ At the end of the book Derek catches Julie and Jack having sex and he’s going to the cellar to smash up the cement trunk, with Mum and he warns the police. “’Go on she’ whispered. I felt weightless, tumbling through space with no sense of up or down. As I closed my lips around Julie’s nipple a soft shudder ran through her body and a voice from across the room said mournfully, ‘Now I’ve seen it all.’ Immediately I tried to pull away. But Julie still had her arms around my neck and she tightened her hold. Her body screened me from Derek. Supporting herself on one elbow, she twisted round to look at him. ‘Have you?’ she said midly. ‘Oh dear.’ But her heart, inches from my faces was pounding. Derek spoke again and sounded much closer. ‘How long has this been going on?’ I was glad I could not see him. ‘Ages,’ Julie said, ‘ages and ages.’” “Then we heard Sue calling Julie’s name and pulling at the door. When Julie let her in, Sue threw her arms round Julie’s neck and hugged her. Julie led Sue to the bed where she sat between us, trembling and pressing her thin lips together. I held her hand. ‘He’s smashing it up,’ she said at last, ‘he found that sledgehammer and he’s smashing it up’ We listened. The thuds were not so loud now, and there were sometimes pauses between blows. Julie got up and locked the door and stood by it. For a while we heard nothing. Thenthere were footsteps down the front path. Julie went to the window. ‘He’s getting in the car.’ There was another long pause before we heard the engine start and the car pull away.” * Een recensie over het boek voor de schoolkrant. Today I’m going to tell you something about the book The cement garden written by Ian McEwan. It’s about four children, between the age of 6 and 16. After their parents died they decided not to tell anybody. They burried their mother in cement in a trunk in the cellar. The whole summerholiday they live alone in the big house. With no neighbours and no family and no friends. At the and pf the summerholiday Julie get a boyfriend and takes him home. He finds out about their mother and when he catches Julie and Jack making love he goes to the cellar and to smash up the the cement trunk. And he goes to the police after that. It’s a psychological book about puberty and death. This is McEwan’s first novel, he wrote it in 1978. Some other books written by him are First Love Last Rites (1976) this is a book with short stories, In Between the Sheets (1978) also a collection of short stories. His second novel was The Comfort of Strangers (1981), A Child in Time (1987) and The innocent (1990) his last book is Black Dogs (1992).