Eine unheimliche DystopieSi può dire del Tedesco che non sia una lingua propriamente dolcissima, ma quando si tratta di trovare i termini adatti per descrivere stati d’animo e situazioni impalpabili e incorporee, i Tedeschi battono tutti. E così hanno inventato questo bel termine: das Unheimlich. Tradotto in Italiano come “Il perturbante”, talvolta come “Il sinistro”, questo termine è, a mio avviso, intraducibile, e si riferisce alla sensazione che si prova quando qualcosa si avverte allo stesso tempo come familiare ed estranea. Il risultato è un’angosciante sensazione di “disturbo”, di perturbamento appunto. Lungi dal voler discutere le implicazioni psicologiche di questo termine (anche se, vista la tematica de “Il giardino di cemento”, ce ne sarebbe bisogno), vorrei fare un brevissimo excursus di questo termine dal punto di vista letterario per arrivare al libro in questione. Tutti, per primo Freud, rintracciano la nascita del perturbante nella letteratura in quei racconti fantastici della tradizione romantica di cui l’esempio più citato è “L’uomo della sabbia” di Hoffmann. In questo caso l’elemento sinistro è la bambola Olympia, un automa dalle sembianze di un’autentica e bellissima ragazza. Certamente la nascita del concetto di “perturbante” è da rintracciarsi proprio qua, ma se leggete “Il giardino di cemento” vi verranno forse in mente, come è successo a me, i bambini protagonisti di “Giro di vite” di Henry James. Con questo libro James è riuscito a far uscire i fantasmi dai ben noti castelli gotici e li ha fatti poi entrare dentro le persone. E mentre i critici se la litigano, alcuni sostenendo che quelli in “Giro di vite” siano dei veri e propri fantasmi, altri affermando che invece si tratti di fantasmi della psiche, noi leggiamo il libro e avvertiamo quella sensazione di “disturbo” che ci angoscia. Perché i bambini subiscono questa sorta di violenza impalpabile, che non capiamo da chi effettivamente sia perpetrata, ma sappiamo che c’è. I bambini di questo libro, che siano posseduti da fantasmi o annientati dalla violenza psicologica dell’istitutrice, posseggono il fattore perturbante identificato da Freud proprio nel fattore infantile: un insieme di innocenza e perversione, di limpido e torbido.Jack, Julie, Sue e Tom, i bambini protagonisti di “Il giardino di cemento” sono, al pari di Miles e Flora di “Giro di vite”, essi stessi fattori perturbanti. Sappiamo che il lato torbido della storia lo si vuole nascondere dal principio. E, infatti, nella prima pagina leggiamo di come il padre cerchi di nascondere col cemento le antiche rovine del giardino di casa loro. Il cemento viene poi usato dai bambini per nascondere ben altro. E dal momento in cui inizia a rapprendersi, cominciano a materializzarsi dei fantasmi pericolosi. Fantasmi che sono ossessioni sessuali, rapporti morbosi che tentano di replicare i tradizionali schemi famigliari uscendone però tremendamente dai confini. Perché i bambini si ritrovano a vivere soli, e allora viene a ricrearsi una situazione simile a quella che troviamo ne “Il signore delle mosche”, dove si racconta di come dei bambini organizzino su un’isola deserta una nuova civiltà. La casa de “Il giardino di cemento” è anch’essa un’isola deserta, circondata com’è dalle rovine di edifici demoliti, lontana dalla civiltà, rappresentata soltanto dalla vista in lontananza di alcuni grattacieli. È una casa che sembra un castello, e allora non stupisce poi tanto se quello che vi avviene dentro assomiglia paurosamente al rumore delle catene e alle urla delle fanciulle segregate nella torre. Viene a crearsi una situazione di sospensione, come se il tempo si fosse fermato, e allora ciò che accade in questa casa nemmeno i suoi abitanti sanno con certezza se accade sul serio. Nascondono un segreto agghiacciante per poter continuare a vivere insieme e, sebbene non vi sia in questo caso nulla che somigli alla conchiglia utilizzata da Piggy nel romanzo di Golding, anche qua, in questa perturbante distopia, vediamo come pian piano avvenga la totale perdita della razionalità umana, come quella che doveva essere un’isola felice dove poter esprimere al massimo la rinnovata libertà infantile diventi piuttosto l’oscuro riflesso di ciò che si nasconde in cantina e nella psiche danneggiata di questi bambini.McEwan è un maestro nel raccontare l’infanzia in tutti i suoi aspetti. In questo caso, come era già avvenuto nelle raccolte di racconti “Primo amore, ultimi riti” e “Fra le lenzuola”, ne indaga a fondo l’aspetto torbido e morboso, non scadendo però mai nella volgarità, anzi, spesso con una tenerezza che alleggerisce il carico di nevrosi portato dal libro.
I came to this book via the excellent 1993 movie version that starred Charlotte Gainsbourg, the gamine, androgynous French actress whose odd beauty -- inherited from her eccentric composer father, Serge, and her svelte model mother Jane Birkin -- I admit an attraction to. As usual she dropped trou in the movie, so I was not disappointed.Gainsbourg was about 21 when she made the film, but was portraying a 16 or 17-year-old adolescent or thereabouts, and looked the part; her character, Julie, seemed to be the focal point of the movie.In the book Julie is certainly a strong and powerful presence (aging from 15 to 17 as the story progresses) as the nominal head of a family of English orphaned adolescents -- Sue (12), Jack (14) and their very young brother, Tom. But Julie is not the protagonist, Jack is. The book is told entirely from his point of view. In the film, Jack seems an aloof and less important character, mainly a reactive one to Julie, and, indeed in the book as well, he is a distant, shiftless, unhygienic, zit-faced angry adolescent slug. When pressed for something to do, he masturbates, often fantasizing about the body of his older sister. At first, reading this book, I was wishing the story had been told from Julie's point of view, but as I read on and thought about it, I started to appreciate Ian McEwan's strategy and decision to tell his story via a fairly weak protagonist. It's a bold and risky choice to have a story told from the perspective of perhaps the least interesting character in the book. The result is a certain clinical precision, a simplicity of language; and Jack's cluelessness and amorality about what goes on around him allows the reader to appreciate the ironies and overlay whatever moral judgments he or she may desire. The unreliability of Jack as a narrator also comes into question at times when he and Julie disagree on the content of past events.The Cement Garden is a macabre, claustrophobic tale of ennui and gothic horror, but not in the usual sense. There are no murderers or vampires or ghosts afoot. There are only the grotesqueries of time and decay and ignorance and secrets. The cement garden in the story has at least two meanings, and both refer to death.Spoilers won't be given here. But it must be said that the symbolic spectres of dead parents hover over the orphaned children in the book as they inhabit their decaying monolithic house, making up the rules as they go along and fearful of the intrusion of the outside world, a world that might take them away and split them apart at any moment. As they play their bizarre games and accumulate their rank detritus, the smell of death triggers memories of life.Cement is constantly breaking down in the novel, a symbol of the impermanence of human structures and the eventual and inevitable conquest by nature. Tombs and buildings are merely temporal monuments of human hubris. There's a lovely section in the book where Jack, lolling about in demolished prefab houses, ruminates about the temporary nature of buildings; the idea that people once took comfort in spaces that are now open to the merciless sky.The book is very English, a new twist on the old Cold Comfort Farm story with a touch of the Village of the Damned. One very astute review here on GR compared it to Jean Cocteau's Les Enfants Terribles. Frequent comparisons made to Lord of the Flies are also apt, but the changes among the children in The Cement Garden are less dramatic, if indeed there are really any at all.The book explores topics such as masturbation, incest, androgyny, gender roles, socialization in isolation, tribalism, death, memory and more. There is no resolution, no redemption, no easy out in this book. I very much enjoyed this odd, meandering story. I could not put it down, in fact.
What do You think about The Cement Garden (2004)?
It has been well over one year since I read Cement Garden. And I was so excited about McEwans at the time, but somehow I haven't read anything else since. Thanks for reminding me, Cecily! I could use some darkness in my reading right now. I am still leaning toward Atonement, but we'll see!
—Cassy
"The Cement Garden" is the strangest book I've ever read, and probably the grossest too. The narrator is a disgusting, 15-year-old boy named Jack who lazes around the house, doesn't much care for bathing, and harbors sexual feelings for his older sister. When his mom dies (dad's already dead), it's Jack's idea to bury her in a trunk in the basement with cement. The descriptions of the smell the trunk emitted still make me cringe and overall, as another reviewer said, the book leaves you feeling very dirty afterwards. Not my sort of book, though I suppose I can see how some people might be fascinated enough to enjoy it. Just too weird and disgusting for me.Find more book reviews at A Quick Red Fox.
—Renee
I saw the movie version of The Cement Garden in the theater when I was fifteen, and completely freaked out. For years afterwards it stayed high on my list of all-time favorites. I haven't seen it again since then, though, so I have no idea what I'd think now, but at the time I just thought it was the greatest thing ever. Incest! Allegory. Incest! Foreigners! Incest! Cement. Incest! Adolescence. Tragedy! Incest! What more do you want from a film at age fifteen?Reading this book was definitely colored by my long-ago experience of the movie, and it was impossible for me to tell to what extent. To me, this book read like a screenplay. All the characters, locations, and action seemed very cinematic, in a good way. I think it's very funny that this was originally marketed as a sensationalistic horror novel, though I guess that makes a certain kind of sense. I mean, it's a little macabre, in its way, I suppose. I really did like it a lot, though some of that must have to do with the thrill I got knowing that even Ian McEwan had to start somewhere. I actually thought this was very well-written, but it was still like looking at the pimply, gangly, compulsively masturbating adolescent who will someday blossom into a distinguished grey-haired, smirking master of the English sentence. To think, the universally acclaimed sex-pervert novelist who wrote Atonement was once a smug-looking first-time novelist in a macrame vest! This should give us all hope.I really liked this book, and I might give it four stars. It is one of the ones where you really feel like you're in the place he's describing and can see all the people, and that's worth real points where I come from. I think I'm just holding him to a higher standard because he's Ian McEwan, also because lately I'm just giving everything three stars because.... that's just sort of how I'm feeling these days. Oh, and it was flawed. I mean, I'm pretty sure it was. But I'm so confused by having seen the movie at one point that I don't feel I can talk about this book with any authority.
—Jessica
