The Cockroach by Ian McEwan (2019)

The Cockroach

Ian McEwan

Publisher - Jonathan Cape - 2019

Paperback - £7.99 (or 50p from a charity shop)

   Something a little different and unexpected and not least because I only found it in a charity shop midday on Saturday and had read it by close of play on Sunday evening.  For a bit of background; I like McEwan.  He's probably one of our finest and most interesting writers and he's one of the few modern authors I can think of who is as likely to get a novella published as a novel.  The Cement Garden (1978) is probably one of my favorite books and has a very strange ability to trap time and slow it down within its pages.  Something that I have only experienced elsewhere within the pages of J G Ballard novels. An author I mention here because I'm currently working through his collected short stories and I think I discovered both authors at about the same time so my brain connects them.

   I was aware of The Cockroach and it was always on the list of potential reads.  I also guessed it was a take on Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis.  But its so much more than just that. At only 100 pages, its too slender a volume for me to be giving away its secrets but its deeply satirical like a Jonathan Swift, absurdest like a Spike Milligan and very very political.  And for what its worth it seems as rational an explanation as to the fate of modern Britain as anything else I've heard recently.  In fact it might be quite hard to see certain politicians on the news from now on and not sit there knowingly nodding.

Steve