...clever and skilful though it may be, as a fictional voice, this one fails completely. Misconceived, alas.

...an orb, a Venetian glass paperweight, of a book; a place where – and be warned, it puts you in the quoting mood – Larkin’s “any-angled light” may “congregate endlessly”.

I was moved to ask a friend halfway through whether he had ever read a book and been unable to decide whether it was utterly ridiculous or rather brilliant.

All the same, the high-wire act doesn’t really come off. McEwan’s usual strengths — imaginative precision, narrative placement and control of story dynamics — can make even slim works like On Chesil Beach (2007) oddly resonant. Nutshell relies instead on pure voice and quickly collapses into a mishmash of pentameter-ridden sentences and half-baked wordplay. An uncharitable reading would see its eccentric set-up as a way of refreshing some essentially banal observations. But perhaps it’s more a case of a bored master-carpenter trying his hand at embroidery.