The Cement Garden

English author Ian McEwan's first novel, The Cement Garden (1978) tells the story of four siblings between the ages of six and seventeen who struggle to survive on their own after the deaths of their mother and father. In 1993, the book was adapted into a film starring Charlotte Gainsbourg.

At the beginning of the novel, the reader is introduced to a relatively normal middle-class family made up of Mother, Father, and their four children: seventeen-year-old Julie, fourteen-year-old Jack, thirteen-year-old Sue, and six-year-old Tom. The story is narrated by Jack who, as a young teenager, experiences feelings of isolation which culminate in frequent fights with the rest of his family, particularly Mother and Julie. Starved for attention, Jack also regularly harasses his little brother, Tom.

In Jack's opening narration, he reveals that while he did not kill Father, he still worries he is to blame for his death. One day, two men deliver cement to the family's house, storing it in the basement. Unsure of what the cement will be used for, Jack hears his parents' arguing about it. Jack also describes unsettling sexual dynamics between the four children. For example, Jack recalls he and Julie making Sue strip off all her clothes so they could examine her like doctors. When Julie tries to coerce Jack into removing his clothes, he adamantly refuses, secretly wishing that Julie would take off her clothes. Though Jack realizes this is inappropriate and not just a normal instance of children "playing doctor," the three children continue to engage in the "game."



At school, Julie is an accomplished athlete with many friends and boyfriends, while Jack is largely a loner with bad acne and poor hygiene. Jack laments that Julie all but ignores him in the halls of their school. Meanwhile, Father, unimpressed by Julie's athletic accomplishments, refuses to attend her events and misses her record-breaking triumphs on the field. This introduces even more strain into Mother and Father's already tense relationship.

One day, Father dies suddenly of a heart attack. A few weeks later, Mother grows very ill. These events cause the family to grow more isolated than ever. Only Julie has friends, but they are forbidden from coming to the house because the rest of the family believes them to be "bad girls." Though Sue has never been ashamed of playing the "doctor game" in the past, she now refuses to participate. As Mother becomes increasingly confined to her bed, Jack begins to act out in new ways, masturbating frequently and cracking the old concrete path in the family's prefabricated garden with a sledgehammer. Meanwhile, the four children have become largely self-sufficient, as their mother's illness makes it impossible for her to participate in maintaining the household.

As the family unit becomes increasingly limited to the four children, Julie and Jack subtly take up the mantles of de facto "mother" and "father." This arrangement causes Jack to feel significant incestuous feelings for his sister. Before Mother finally succumbs to her illness, she makes Jack and Julie promise her they won't tell anyone about her death, or else they will all end up in foster care and lose the house. After Mother dies, the four children gather in her bedroom. Julie attempts to cover her mother's body with a sheet, but her feet keeping sticking out from the bottom. This morbid yet farcical display makes the three oldest children burst out laughing. To hide Mother's death from the authorities, Jack, Julie, and Sue encase Mother's body in the basement, using the cement Father bought to create a makeshift sarcophagus.



Though the children had kept the house in a semi-suitable condition while Mother still lived, her death causes the family to deteriorate into squalor. The trash bins overflow, attracting swarms of flies and wasps. Meanwhile, Tom's increased reliance on Julie and Jack as his new "mother" and "father" cause him to regress into an infant state, sleeping in a crib, crawling under the kitchen table, and drinking from a bottle. Sue largely keeps to herself, reading and writing for hours in her room. Julie begins a relationship with twenty-three-year-old Derek, which makes Jack jealous. For his part, Jack is plagued by nightmares about his Mother and what they did to her body. In an effort to purge these nightmares, Jack stops masturbating and begins to take better care of himself, regularly bathing and cutting his fingernails. Consequently, Julie begins to treat Jack with more warmth.

Before long, Mother's body begins to fill the house with the smell of human decay. When this arouses Derek's suspicions, he is told that the smell is due to a dead dog buried in the basement. However, Tom reveals to Jack that Derek knows that their Mother is buried beneath the house.

In the last chapter, Jack takes off his clothes and enters Julie's room, only to find Tom there. While Tom sleeps, Julie enters and does not seem to be surprised or disturbed by Jack's naked body. Rather, she remarks that his penis is "big." While Tom sleeps, Julie undresses as well. Derek enters the room, disgusted by the entire sordid scene. After a mortified Derek leaves the room, Jack and Julie have sex. They are interrupted by loud noises coming from the basement and learn from Sue that Derek is smashing the concrete sarcophagus below with a sledgehammer. The police arrive as the siblings reminisce about their dead mother.



The Cement Garden is a Freudian nightmare of family dysfunction and gothic sexuality that kick-started McEwan's long and illustrious career as a novelist.