McEwan’s foetal voice is a whimper

Novelists are always casting around for untested points of view – surprising angles, from which the world might be seen afresh. Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex (2002) is narrated by a girl, Callie, who discovers that she is also, anatomically, a boy. Martin Amis’s Time’s Arrow (1991) is narrated by the soul, or conscience, of a Nazi doctor.

These perspectives, when they work, open up rich new fields of experience for the novelist to explore. ...