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  • Reading On Chesil Beach

  • Ian McEwan remains one of my favorite writers working today, and On Chesil Beach provides testament as to why. As with his previous books, detail is key. McEwan places the reader so solidly in the story that it feels as though you're standing right alongside the main characters.

    The novella c ... Continue

    Ian McEwan remains one of my favorite writers working today, and On Chesil Beach provides testament as to why. As with his previous books, detail is key. McEwan places the reader so solidly in the story that it feels as though you're standing right alongside the main characters.

    The novella centers around a brand new married couple and the events of their wedding night. The story is set in the late 50s, when sexual mores were obviously significantly different than they are today. Both husband and wife have serious hangups and fears going into the big night, and we flash forward and backward to see the evolution of their relationship. The story is brutally realistic, but beautifully told. McEwan is able to write sentences so sublime that they require reading and re-reading. As with all McEwan novels on my list, this one is highly recommended.

    

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• ― moogle said on Apr 20, 2007 about the Hardcover edition| Add your feedback

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  • I got the audio version of this and it's read by the author. I don't tend to like audio-books read by the author, they generally seem too monotone for me or something. Also, the beginning just seemed to go on too long about her aversion to sex. I got bored and my mind wandered.
    This book has g ... Continue

    I got the audio version of this and it's read by the author. I don't tend to like audio-books read by the author, they generally seem too monotone for me or something. Also, the beginning just seemed to go on too long about her aversion to sex. I got bored and my mind wandered.
    This book has generally good ratings so my recommendation would be not to listen to the audio version. Maybe you will have better luck with it than I did. Good luck.

    

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• ― Angie (angiebro) said on Jan 9, 2008 about the Audio CD edition| Add your feedback

A novel of remarkable depth and poignancy from one of the most acclaimed writers of our time.

It is July 1962. Florence is a talented musician who dreams of a career on the concert stage and of the perfect life she will create with Edward, an earnest young history student at University College of London, who unexpectedly wooed and won her heart. Newly married that morning, both virgins, Edward and Florence arrive at a hotel on the Dorset coast. At dinner in their rooms they struggle to suppress their worries about the wedding night to come. Edward, eager for rapture, frets over Florence’s response to his advances and nurses a private fear of failure, while Florence’s anxieties run deeper: she is overcome by sheer disgust at the idea of physical contact, but dreads disappointing her husband when they finally lie down together in the honeymoon suite.

Ian McEwan has caught with understanding and compassion the innocence of Edward and Florence at a time when marriage was presumed to be the outward sign of maturity and independence. On Chesil Beach is another masterwork from McEwan—a story of lives transformed by a gesture not made or a word not spoken.

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NY Times Notable Book Club (328)

Eclectic Book Club (230)

• marriagesexfictionnovelbritish literature2007