The Cement Garden" is the first novel written by award-winning British author, Ian McEwan. It was originally published in 1978.

The Cement Garden is a beautifully woven, but very dark tale of childhood and lost innocence...

The plot of The Cement Garden centres around a group of four children, Julie, Jack, Sue and Tom aged between 6 and 17.

Their father dies of a heart attack whilst laying a cement path in the family's garden and soon afterwards, their mother becomes ill. Fearing that she may have to go into hospital, she encourages the eldest, Julie, to look after the other children, run the household and deal with financial matters.

The family have no near neighbours and the mother avoids seeing a doctor, so when she dies, no-one knows apart from the children. They take the decision not to tell anyone else rather than risk having to leave their home...so they find a use for the cement left unused when their father died, hide their mother's body in the cellar of the house and carry on as normal...at least for a while...