![]() From then on, it's all regression andĭecay. The loss of their mother leaves them without relatives so to avoid being separated they keep her death a secret and bury her in a trunkful of wet cement in the basement. First their father dies,Īnd then their mother. "The Cement Garden" describes the process that steadily isolates these four children, until they're so absolutely alone and so at odds with the rest of the world that there is not way of returning to normal life. ![]() For Jack, his two sistersĪnd his little brother, the only pleasures are those that erupt beneath a rigid surface: some rather joyless sexual games and a few stolen moments of willful disobedience. Jack's father is a crabbed, oppressive man whose greatest pride is a tightlyĬonstructed garden of plaster, plastic, rocks and widely spaced tulips his mother is not much more than a shadow, and their neighborhood is a wasteland of abandoned prefabs. Jack, is a 15-year-old English boy so sunk in self-loathing that there are long stretches when he can't even be bothered to bathe or brush his teeth. His brief novel is really a kind of extended dream, although there's nothing dreamy about the precision and clarity of the writing. ![]()
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