On Chesil Beach Reviews

• Almost

  
  By A8IPQ1Q1O7YX5 on 2007-06-15
  A brilliant book, but such a sad one; it would be unfair not to say so up front. Ian McEwan is a master at dissecting emotions. Every page of this wonderfully-crafted novel gave me the uncanny feeling of living within the skins of the two main characters, Edward and Florence, just married as the book opens. When they fall in love, nurture ambitions, experience happiness, I feel these things too. But when happiness eludes them, the pain is unbearable, not least because the author never lets us forget by how small a margin their happiness was missed.
  
  In his last major novel, SATURDAY, McEwan pulled back from the multi-decade scope of ATONEMENT its predecessor, choosing to confine himself to the events of a single day. Here, the essential action occupies a mere three hours, described in a book which is itself unusually compact, a mere novella of only 200 delicate pages. In an opening that is surely a homage to Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach," the new husband and wife sit in a hotel room within sound of the sea on England's South coast. They eat a mediocre meal in one room; in the next, their bed stands waiting. They love each other, there is never any doubt about that, but they are inexperienced and secretly afraid. The book tells how they came to that moment, and what becomes of their love and fears as they move from one room into the other.
  
  I have not known McEwan to write before in such detail about sex, but his writing is never prurient. Every detail serves to illustrate the psychological intercourse between these two talented and caring young people. On this particular night, as in a high-stakes game, their honeymoon bed becomes the board upon which all the other pieces of their relationship must be played. By going back to the early 1960s, that dark hour just before the dawn of the sexual revolution, McEwan performs the remarkable feat of undoing the modern liberation of sex from marriage and returning to a mindset in which marriage was not only a contract for sex, but sex might also be a prime reason for marriage.
  
  But not the only reason. The focus on the bedroom also makes you consider all the other qualities that these two bring to their marriage, and before long you feel that you know them very well. [Exceptionally well in my case, since I was also born in Britain in the same year (1940), and share qualities with each of them; readers might take this into account when weighing the objectivity of my reactions.] Edward is a bright young man from the country who has recently achieved a first-class academic degree. Florence comes from a more socially sophisticated family, though she herself is naive in most things. The one exception is her calling as a violinist; here as in SATURDAY, McEwan is extraordinary in his use of music; the sections describing Florence's quartet playing are right up there with Vikram Seth's AN EQUAL MUSIC, my touchstone for sensitive writing about musicians. So both are bright, both are talented, both feel the stirring of new possibilities, but there are big differences between them, socially and culturally (Edward, for example, is into rock), and they each want different things. But the most heartbreaking things in this book are not their differences, but how often and how close they come to making new connections; just an inch more, a moment longer, and everything might be all right.... Almost.
  
  But McEwan does not end the story in the bedroom or on the beach below. Much as in ATONEMENT, though in only a few pages, he adds an epilogue continuing the story forward several decades. At the time, I felt it was too brief to settle all the emotions stirred up by the preceding pages, but now as I write, several hours after closing the book, I begin to see its rightness and appreciate its consolation.
  
  

• By Doing Nothing-An Entire Course Of A Life Can Be Changed

  
  By A1TPW86OHXTXFC on 2007-06-07
  "They were young,educated and both virgins on this wedding night, and they lived in a time when conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible."-Ian McEwan
  
  Ian McEwan placed this novel in 1962, just before the Sexual Revolution. What a difference a few years would bring to the lives of those who were lucky enough to belong to this generation.
  "The sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s were marked by profound shifts in the mores and attitudes towards women's sexuality, homosexuality, and freedom of sexual expression. It was the culmination of the intellectual contribution of radical Freudian theorist Wilhelm Reich and the empirical sex research of Alfred Kinsey; the battles of pornographers, performers, and literary writers to secure the right of sexual speech; and the permissive context created by the social movements of the period, especially the counterculture movement, the women's movement, and the gay and lesbian liberation movement. It freed the woman to express her sexuality which in turn freed the man." Art Friedken
  
  Don't you want somebody to love?
  Don't you need somebody to love?
  Wouldn't you love somebody to love?
  You better find somebody to love.
  - Jefferson Airplane
  
  Two lonely souls, fleeing their family roots meet and over the course of a year fall in love. Both are virgins. Their courtship begins and progresses slowly. Not only is the subject of sex not spoken, the expression of sex is verboten. Florence, a talented musician, who wants to appear in concert and Edward a history major at the University of London marry and as this novel begins are entering their first evening together. Ian McEwan with great skill interweaves the past of both into the present as this one night is played out. Florence,who loves Edward so but has some difficulty with sexual expression. Edward, who adores Florence and seemingly understands her extreme shyness. The dinner is partially eaten and then the evening begins.
  
  I have had an on and off affair with Ian McEwan and his past books. 'Atonement' was not a book I relished. 'Saturday' set me at ease. 'On Chesil Beach' McEwan does not display any dazzled effects; he moves forward with superb writing and a feel for the emotions of both men and women. His tale of Florence and Edward will rank among his finest works.
  
  We, who entered, survived and flourished during the 60's sexual revolution, and those after us, might understand how Florence and Edward could overcome their difficulties-it seems so simple, really. They are innocent and cannot talk frankly. There is a lesson to be learned here, and Ian McEwan has been able to depict these two people who are afraid to talk openly and the consequences there-in. This is one of the most superb books of the year.
  
  Highly Recommended. prisrob 6-07-07
  
  Saturday Book
  
  Atonement: A Novel
  
  
  

• Simply impeccable. Sad, but impeccable.

  
  By A1I6ZXLKEUKV7W on 2007-08-21
  Nowadays, in premarital relationships, sexual compatibility is something that most couples do not wait too long to find out about. Typically, we're getting to this part quicker and quicker it seems, and I would venture to say that this is an area fraught with less mutual confusion than say for instance, the depth of true "love" between the two people. Compatibility in other realms taking a [shall we say] front seat while the people themselves are [ahem] in the back one!
  In other words, [generally speaking now], courtship includes sexship!
  Yeah! Well!
  ? Meet Edward and Florence.
  
  We are told in the very first sentence [the author does not court his reader long]... They were young, educated, and both virgins on this, their wedding night, and they lived in a time when a conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible.
  When was this time?
  1962.
  Pre-sexual-revolution England.
  
  Thing is, Edward and Florence are in love. They've got that part of things in order.
  They're 22 years old. They've got the world by the tail.
  Florence, daughter of wealthy parents, has her musical interests.
  Edward loves history, and dreams of being a writer.
  McEwan paints a rather idyllic sort of atmosphere surrounding the couple, Edward becoming increasingly involved with the Ponting family, even moving into their villa just off the Banbury Road. He plays regular tennis with Geoffrey, the future father-in-law, and lands a job working in the family business.
  What could be wrong in this picture?
  
  Well, in the midst of all of this splendor and promise, there are things that both of these youngsters avoid confronting, on a communicative level.
  Edward, well aware of his own sexual inexperience, is startled to find that even his slightest advances toward Florence are met with seemingly undue resistance. Yea, even revulsion.
  Florence, we are told in one brief, almost hidden away sentence, thinks that Edward has been with many women, before her. This misinformation fuels her reticence and fear.
  McEwan seems to suggest [albeit so subtly that the reader must guess at it] that Florence has experienced sexual abuse at the hands of her father in the past.
  Point being that lack of communication, like termites, is eating away at what could be a perfectly good building.
  
  And so here we are at The Wedding Night.
  We are on Chesil Beach, at this resort.... well, not us, but these two are there.
  And McEwan writes so forcefully that we cannot help but become wicked voyeurs.
  Yea, we lean in closer, to be sure we hear every word... see every eyelash flicker.
  They are having a very lackluster, fear-fraught dinner.
  And then the moment arrives.
  The bed.
  False signals are flying every which way, like penalty flags at a soccer match.
  McEwan is all about moments. About antecedent causes, and how moments in time can change us forever.
  Well, for those of us who appreciate this aspect of his work, [and I am one of them] he is not about to disappoint us here. Everything about this novella is compact and quick, and believe me, it comes to a ragingly lopsided climax now.
  Quickly. No words wasted.
  It is not spoiling anything here for me to say that the bed scene is an absolute disaster. An emotional armageddon.
  
  But the true tragedy is yet to appear.
  On Chesil Beach.
  
  Not to over-moralize here, but the book made me ask myself a question.
  At what point do we attend to the physical matters of relationship?
  Is the correct answer to be only after the wedding day, as many religions [and presumably, "God"] would tell us? As Edward and Florence did?
  Far be it from me to attempt an answer to that question that would suit all people.
  But, this book surely provides one look at the devastation that can result from an unrealistic commitment to delayed gratification and lack of open communication.
  Whatever else we want to think about sex, one thing that rings true in this book is that it is profoundly important.
  And to think otherwise, and enter into marriage in a state of mutual sexual ignorance, can be life-threatening.
  
  And yet, On Chesil Beach is not even about sex.
  It's about "love and patience" which, as Edward realizes on the last page, [and decades later] could have saved the day. Could have "seen them both through."
  We are given hints that Florence has learned the same thing, too.
  Sometimes, [in fact, perhaps all the time] to do nothing, is to have done too much.
  The armageddon of the bedroom scene was fixable.
  
  What an amazing, amazing book!
  Days later, I re-read the last 50 pages or so, aloud, to a friend, and even knowing it all ahead of time, had to stop several times. Couldn't go on.
  The last chapter, the fifth one, is among the most moving pieces of writing I have ever encountered.
  On Chesil Beach is the eighth McEwan book I have read.
  I've loved each one, but I think I like this one best.
  So, in my opinion, Chesil Beach is five stars out of five!
  It will become a beloved novel to everyone who will have, or is having, or has had a love relationship with another person. And you've gotta admit, that's a huge audience.
  Such is the appeal, of On Chesil Beach.
  
  

• brilliant little book

  
  By A40QZCBHXTGCG on 2007-09-01
  This book was so good-packed with history and a message. I was captivated by it.
  
  He painted the political and social climate of the time in such a vivid manner. His insights were perfect and his historical detail was too good for words. He puts the reader back into 1962-even if the reader had not been born yet.
  
  It begins on the wedding night of two virgins, Edward and Florence. He's ready and willing to go, but she is filled with dread. She tries to have sex with Edward out of a sense of wifely duty.
  
  Their childhoood's are related. She is raised by emotionally distant parents, Violet and Geoffrey; and he is reared by a handicapped mother and a over-whelmed father. Both Edward and Florence try to escape their past lives with their marriage.
  
  The ending was sad, and, I was surprised. This book is worth reading-it is a historical treasure and tells an interesting and perplexing story.
  
  

• "A secret affair between disgust and joy."

  
  By A2MF2QVSCUI27G on 2007-06-05
  
  
  In his latest novel, McEwan once again demonstrates a unique talent for precise examination of the pivotal moments of people's lives, the mostly unmarked, yet critical events that alter the direction of the future. In prose that perfectly captures the details of a momentous occasion, highlighted by Edward and Florence Mayhew's wedding eve jitters, the couple is unprepared for the consummate choices they face, trapped by their own expectations. The time is 1962, the place a honeymoon suite on the Dorset coast. In their early twenties, neither has life experience with which to gauge their perceptions, the stultifying social constrictions of the 1950s still hovering, years from the upheavals that will rock the late sixties.
  
  Certainly, Edward and Florence are conservative, goal-oriented products of their society, decidedly conventional. An intensely insular young violinist, Florence enjoys the security of her musical world, comforted by its definitions. Whatever rebellions she experiences, Florence keeps to herself, unable to bear the discomfort of conflict, although increasingly irritated with her family, her mother's distance, her father's cloying presence in her life. For his part, Edward sees his new bride as the Holy Grail, both deliverance and escape from a family of origin that has taxed his youth with unexpected pretensions. Florence is the first to step into another identity, that of a married man creating his own interpretation of family. Both nurture expectations that are unrealistic, a precarious balance of sexual anticipation and sexual revulsion.
  
  In the first blush of innocence, the pair seems well matched, their ineptitude nearly charming and certainly representative of the era. But a mutual penchant of obfuscation they have so far managed to ignore becomes a living presence in the wedding suite as the couple confronts an appalling lack of communication. Neither has seen fit to share their concerns and fears beforehand; hence, they are locked in an impasse, one that is only temporarily resolved by Florence's escape to the dark sliver of beach outside. While the reader understands Florence's flawed response to Edward's clumsy advances, the new husband is not privy to his wife's complications, left to puzzle out his dilemma with little information. The result is a perfectly-pitched contretemps that beautifully defines the age of innocence as it grapples with reality. Once more McEwan proves himself an unparalleled provocateur. Luan Gaines/2007.
  
  
  
• A writer's writer
  By A3GDAFTLQIFTYT on 2007-09-03
  This novel will richly reward anyone who appreciates serious literature and writing as craft. McEwan's control of his narrative is breathtaking: the first section ranks with the best-written passages I've read. The novel tells the sad story of a star-crossed couple back in 1962, young people stumbling over their own limitations and the stultifying sexual inhibition of their time. It's beautifully wrought. McEwan doesn't waste a word as his concise story works towards it's entirely appropriate conclusion. I recommend this highly to any serious reader.
  
  
• Time travel into wordless ages
  By A3NH7PYU4AD5GA on 2007-08-09
  A marriage is about to start and then fails on square one because both antagonists don't really know what is what regarding the physical side of it, and though neither is an illiterate yokel, they don't manage to rationalize it enough to talk their way through it.
  Hard to believe this is set only about 45 years ago. It reads as if it was a lot older. Some reviewers have problems with that. They seem to think this is not real. This can not be the 60s of the 20th.
  But my own recollection confirms to me: this is how it was, then. The wordlessness, the embarrassment, the fear. The shame. What a breakthrough the much maligned 'sexual revolution' of a few years later was. It brought freedom for many, freedom from the paralysis of Chesil Beach. To me, this story of complete disaster in a relationship reads entirely true.
  (Just in case, I don't deny that the 'sexual revolution' brought us some other trouble in its wake, but that's besides the point now. And maybe it was not all that bad after all, right.)
  There is one caveat: how do we know that the woman's problems would not have been the same 10 years later? Sometimes a short term problem, i.e. the speechlessness, just paints over the long term problem. What if she couldn't have been different under any circumstances? That's a possible reading which IME does not even imply. Which does not reduce the high level of enjoyment and interest of the book.
  
  
• Good - but odds on favorite for the Booker Prize???
  By A2B98MIGNP4DNF on 2007-08-11
  Three stars may be a bit unfair but just this week the Booker Prize 2007 longlist was announced and Chesil Beach is the odds on favorite to win it. I find this somewhat annoying. No doubt Chesil is an impeccably written story, but I somehow feel that impeccable writing is the least we'd expect from such a renowned novelist, especially writing in short story format (yes book is 200 pages long, but with normal pages this would drop at least a third).
  
  While the overall theme is engrossing and the characterizations wonderful, Florence's wedding night behavior seem somewhat farfetched and forced in an otherwise very realistic setting. I also found the ending of the novel disappointing: after so much care and attention to creating a tension-filled few hours, some 40 years in a life pass by in a handful of pages.
  
  All in all, if one is looking to savor McEwan I would suggest "Atonement". "On Chesil Beach" left me feeling a bit shortchanged for having been sold a novel for what is really an extended short story.
  
  
• A Talented Wordcrafter Describes an Improbable Honeymoon
  By A1K1JW1C5CUSUZ on 2007-07-06
  If you are easily seduced by beautiful sentences, you'll feel On Chesil Beach is a five-star book. If you love exploring inner dialogue, you'll be even more pleased with this book.
  
  If, however, you like your stories to be compelling because of their relevance and interest to your own life, you'll wonder why in the world Mr. McEwan chose to write about this particular problem of poor communications in the context of 1962. As you delve deeper into the book, you'll be even more puzzled by the book's pivotal event and the characters' reactions to it.
  
  The short book (neither novella nor full novel) is organized in five parts that seem much like the acts in a Greek tragedy. The opening scene shows a couple dining in their room at an inn. "They were young, educated, and both virgins on this, their wedding night, and they lived in a time when a conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible." The second act describes how they met. The third act takes place in their bedroom in the inn. The fourth act describes their courtship. The fifth act takes place on the beach and in their lives afterward as they attempt and fail to communicate.
  
  Mr. McEwan does a good job of capturing your attention through exploring the couple's growing tension as they move toward the consummation of their marriage. But past that point, the story seemed like a punctured balloon to me: My interest was gone. I suspect that reaction is because I didn't feel close to either character; they are more there to entertain me than to lead me into experiencing the story like the characters do.
  
  Clearly, the story would have worked much better for me if focused around a more universal trial in marriage, such as handling both sets of parents during the birth of a first child. I also thought that Mr. McEwen played the role of the Greek chorus too often . . . telling us what was going on rather than letting us see and hear the action. The fourth part seems clearly out of place; it should have preceded the third part.
  
  Unless you are drawn to beautiful sentences and images, I suggest you skip this book . . . it's a misdirected storytelling foray by a talented writer that is eminently avoidable.
  
  
• In Need of a Fast Buck
  By A3O62OXYDS44UX on 2007-06-23
  I'm a great fan of Mr.McEwan. I thought his novel "Saturday" was superb, an allegory for our time. However, in his newest novel he must have wanted to cash in on his famous literary name and make a fast buck, that's how slipshod On "Chesil Beach" is. Clearly its cardboard characters and slick facile philosophy was dashed off. Two pre-sixties sexual revolution characters meet, marry, encounter a moment of sexual difficulty on their wedding night and part. That's the plot. At the end the author dashes off 30 years of history of the male of the novel in about two pages, giving his point of view of the moment when he and his wife of a few hours parted company. The lady's point of view is totally ignored. "This is how the entire course of a life can be changed - by doing nothing", the author tells us. If Edward had run after Florence things would have been different. But would it? What would have been more courageous and more interesting from the novelist's and reader's point of view would have been to stay with these two characters and seen how life worked out for them. A very disappointing novel.
  
  
• Not a novel.
  By A2CUWCJHUPGL9W on 2007-06-23
  This book is not a novel at barely 200 pages long. I was uninterested in the characters and the silly plot. I was disturbed by McEwan's repetitive use (or, as I feel, misuse) of the word "nauseous." The worst line in the book being on page 121, "He was nauseous with desire and indecision." Ugh, awful writing. I like Ian McEwan, and am a fan of his unusual plots and great character driven stories, but this book was downright painful to read. After incredible books like Atonement, Saturday and Enduring Love, this one is just plain bad. Poor Florence, she is treated very poorly by both her new husband and Ian McEwan; he is totally unsynmpathetic towards her. I, too, am in the majority of not liking this book, but it just doesn't compare with his other works, at all. Don't be "nauseated" by reading this book and wasting time that could be spent on another much better novel. Read Abundance (Sena Jeter Naslund) if you want to read about a real dysfunctional marriage! Louis and Marie worked a heck of a lot harder than these two! Very disappointing.
  
  
• McEwan's Latest Sketch
  By AX5Q4XQ7UPIRM on 2007-05-30
  Like many of McEwan's books, this one was difficult to hate/difficult to love. Difficult to hate as McEwan is one of the most skillful writers in English right now--he writes sentences that are among the most elegant going. At the same time, it was difficult for me to get the sense of this book as a fully realized work, as On Chesil Beach is indeed a sketch, rather than a novel. The story concerns a pair of newlyweds preparing for their first night as man and wife. Like many of McEwan's early works, On Chesil Beach deals very intimately with the vagaries and raw emotions that are at the center of any sexual relationship. In this particular case, you are presented with a couple who are deeply in love with one another, but whose respective attitudes to their imminent conjugal congress could not be further removed from each other. The eventual confrontation is told with startling detail and finely observed nuance. Yet the book is repeatedly interjected with exhaustive exposition that feels largely superfluous. Ultimately, I must say that On Chesil Beach irritated me far less than the equally well written Saturday. At the same time, this work can only be considered a minor accomplishment.
  
  While I am at it, I wanted to make anyone interested in this book aware of Jonathan Lethem's EXCELLENT review in the New York Times Book Review. Lethem has summed up just what makes McEwan McEwan in an incredibly succinct and accurate fashion. Like much of Lethem's criticism, it is spot on.
  
  
• Hugely disappointing, a shell of a novel compared to other McEwan
  By A1E9F01Q9GWMT0 on 2007-06-19
  I don't know what book some of these Amazon reviewers read, so I guess I'll just agree with the actual book critics who said the book vacillates between mediocre to bad. The characters of ON CHESIL BEACH are unbelievable and unsympathetic. The story isn't compelling. Period. The end. This book has to be judged against the breadth of the McEwan backlist. And if an author is capable of such mastwerworks as ENDURING LOVE, AMSTERDAM, SATURDAY and especially ATONEMENT--page-for-page, the best novel of the last decade--we can't just give him an automatic 4-star or 5-star pass just because he's Ian McEwan. He's one of the greatest living novelists in the English language. We should expect perfection from McEwan, not a flimsy insubstantial sex romp like ON CHESIL BEACH.
  
  Remember the first time you read ATONEMENT? How you tried to force yourself to slow down just so you could relish every paragraph, every sentence, every word? ON CHESIL BEACH lacks the craft and the passion of ATONEMENT...by a mile. Will not recommend this book to a single person.
  
  
• What might have been
  By AZY9TU35UPRUE on 2007-07-04
  As an Ian McEwan virgin, I was eagerly anticipating my tryst with this book--but it turned out to be as disappointing and unsatisfying as Edward's and Florence's wedding night (well, maybe not quite).
  
  McEwan does not merely ignore, but actually reverses, the wise "show, don't tell" advice about fiction writing. In his expository chapters about Edward's and Florence's backgrounds and courtship, he doesn't let us see much of them interacting and conversing with each other and their families; instead of fleshing them out in these sections, he gives us their inner thoughts, a panoply of geographical place names that won't mean much to readers outside the U.K. and a list of gourmet vegetables that Edward tastes for the first time at his future in-laws' dinner table: courgettes, aubergines and mangetouts.
  
  Conversely, in the play-by-play account of the wedding-night bedroom activities, McEwan "shows" each frame of the encounter with exhaustive, sometimes clinical detail. In this area, less is often more, and although it requires greater effort to write about physical intimacy with subtlety and allusion, it can still evoke the same intense reaction in the reader--without getting the sheets so messy. Do we really need words like "perineum" and the focus on the lone pubic hair that has escaped from Florence's knickers? Since I've already given away my copy of "On Chesil Beach," I can't use exact quotes here, but suffice it to say that the description of Edward's sticky, gummy ejaculate adhering to Florence's knees and chin is over the top--almost as if the author is trying to turn off the reader as well as Florence.
  
  The story could have ended effectively and poignantly after the couple's hopeless, near-tragic postcoital verbal battle on the beach, perhaps with a few closing thoughts from the author on the sadness and might-have-been-ness of it all. But instead, there is an anticlimactic final chapter consisting of what sound like afterthoughts, hurriedly recounting Edward's meanderings over the next 40 years. Somewhat mystifyingly, McEwan does not mention Florence's personal life after the traumatic wedding night, although he has paid equal attention to both characters until this last chapter. He does, however, offer an oblique but important clue. In a recent review of "On Chesil Beach," Christopher Hitchens concludes dismissively--and erroneously--that "Florence, a classically trained violinist, devotes the remainder of her life to a rather spinsterish role in a string quartet." Not at all. In an admiring newspaper review of a triumphant performance by that string quartet at Wigmore Hall in Oxford, the fictional reviewer singles out the exceptional playing of the first violinist, who is Florence. "She is obviously in love," writes this critic (to the best of my recollection), "not only with the music and with Mozart, but with life itself." Surely McEwan is implying that Florence, unlike Edward, has ultimately found fulfillment and happiness.
  
  
• Disappointing!
  By A1WD9WJJIXVR5I on 2007-06-26
  If your looking for insightful, intraspective, self-important blabbering in this review, warning: don't read mine! I tell it like I see it, with simplicity and straightforwardness. I was very disappointed by this "short story". I was so excited to read it because of the how much I enjoyed Atonement, and the great review this book received from NBC's Today Show, but was sadly disappointed. I kept having to remind myself that this book was set in the 1960's, not the 1860's, as it seemed quite unbelievable. Just plain dumb, and revoltingly/unneccessarily graphic descriptions where they just weren't needed. Yuck-save your money and purchase A Thousand Splendid Suns instead!!!!!
  
  
• I hated this book !
  By A37910PACTXLK3 on 2007-07-04
  All prose and no story. No character arc, and the most disappointing, pointless attempt at a story I have ever read. This is my first experience with this author, and my last.
  
  
• McEwan Beached
  By A31CJROEQWBIO8 on 2007-07-30
  England in the 1960's, but the author makes it feel like Edwardian England. The story revolves around a couple on their wedding night, which becomes a disaster and results in immediate divorce. None of the characters are interesting or memorable. The writing is anachronistic - a waste of paper & ink and the reader's time. The author may have been trying to produce a pop-classic like "Bridges of Madison County" or "Love Story", but nothing gels.
  
  
• 'This is how the entire course of a life can be changed - by doing nothing.'
  By A328S9RN3U5M68 on 2007-08-31
  Ian McEwan is a master of atmospheric writing, taking a seemingly isolated incident and building a story around it in a way that the reader completely lives in the moment described by his novel. He selects strange topics and then makes them feel so familiar by comparison to each of our lives that exploring the dense background he paints pulls us in like a strong magnet. Reading McEwan is one of the rare pleasures literature lovers find. Few writers of today can match his quiet, subtle, but bravura technique.
  
  ON CHESIL BEACH is essentially a study of a wedding night, a night when the two characters involved approach the virginal consummation of their marriage with disastrous results. Florence is bright, a gifted violinist, beautiful and fragile in affairs of the heart and senses: she is frigid. Edward, her new husband, is of lower class than she, but has reached a degree of education and overcome some thorny family obstacles to become a young bridegroom longing for his marriage night, a night he blunders with premature ejaculation. McEwan leads into this evening and its subsequent resolution on Chesil Beach with delicate prose, brings us to the topic of climax, and then offers flashes of background of each of his characters that allows us to understand the subsequent course of events 'doing nothing' brings.
  
  In beautiful prose, stunningly elegant writing, and rich observations of life in the early 1960s with all that the decade of 'enlightenment' and changes in England and the world produced, Ian McEwan has created another masterpiece. Highly recommended. Grady Harp, August 07
  
  
• Oh, please...
  By A21APQHFK19BLJ on 2007-09-15
  This is an absurd and pretentious little book and tedious beyond bearing. I find it hard to believe that any person not suffering from confused sexual orientation or some sort of previous trauma could possibly be as repulsed by sex as is the woman in this book. It's certainly not because it was 1962, which was as lusty--possibly lustier--than after the explosion of the "sexual revolution," which really only happened because women finally had control of avoiding conception, syphillus could be cured with anti-biotics, and sexually transmitted diseases weren't publicized. And, honestly, no woman would ever have written this self-important, desperately literary little novel!
  
  
• Clearly in the minority
  By ACLLL23JWV4SZ on 2007-06-19
  I fully realize that as I am writing this, I am outnumbered 18-1 in the reviews of this book.
  
  Frankly, I absolutly loathed it.
  
  Florence and Edward don't, for a second, feel like actual human beings. I never saw any indication of why these two were "in love" or why they would ever have gotten to the point of being married.
  
  Edward is married to a woman who pretty much recoils at intimacy and who has made it clear she doesn't want his tongue in her mouth and yet while kissing her, seems to believe she is going to...well...take him in her mouth? Florence suggests, on her wedding night, that she and Edward would be fine as long as he goes out and makes love to other women? Any of this is realistic?
  
  The ending just caps it off. It sounds like a guy with a failed life, "talking an ex pretty" believing that it would have worked only "if".
  
  I never got the characters, never cared about them, certainly didn't see any reason they were together and just didn't enjoy it.
  
  
  
  
• The ickiness of intimacy
  By A2E3GFHUDNPYDH on 2007-07-27
  As the novella (miniscule font in a small dimensioned book) begins, Florence and Edward are "young [22 years old], educated, and both virgins," newlyweds on their wedding night contemplating the evening's objective: consummation. But considering his prenuptial preparation and nature--prone to making spontaneous relationship decisions in the throes of passion, hers--uptight in the ways of intimacy, what transpires is no surprise. The couple's progress is interrupted at opportune moments for flashbacks into their pasts: a bit on their upbringings, family members, meeting, and courtship. Alternate chapters cover the wedding night. Its final dozen pages fast-forward four decades beyond the honeymoon. On the night in question, she naively suffers from a failure to understand; he just plain misunderstands. Readers, sexually squeamish or not, may also suffer when reading the minutiae of their intimacy, which is, at times, just plain too much information. Better: The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton.
  
  
  
• A lovingly crafted lament about miscommunication
  By A75W6T9I2S8BA on 2007-08-01
  "On Chesil Beach" by Booker Prize winning author Ian McEwan is a masterpiece--one of those rare books that keeps getting better the more the reader thinks about it and studies how it was crafted to achieve its overall stunning effect. The book is set in a few brief hours--actually one late afternoon and evening--in or near a hotel room on Chesil Beach in the south of England. It is a honeymoon and both the husband and the wife are virgins. Through seamless transitions to flashbacks, McEwan artfully weaves in just enough background information so that we feel we know and understand these vulnerable and fragile young 22-year-olds. They are truly in love, but they are on a collision course to disaster.
  
  I disagree with many of the other reviewers here on Amazon who believe that this couple's wedding night disaster is partially or wholly caused by the period in which the novel is set--a time just before the sexual revolution of the mid-1960s. The message of this work is clearly not one of criticism for the sexual mores of any particular historical period. What happens to this young couple could happen at any time, in any culture--even today when sex is matter-of-fact, and in-your-face, everywhere, all the time.
  
  The message of this novel is a lovingly crafted lament. It is about the appalling lack of communication that can exist all too easily between people who truly love each other, and how this silence about essential matters of the heart can rise up like an erupting volcano and suffocate even the most promising relationship. Miscommunication is at the heart of nearly all breakups, be they between lovers, spouses, friends, or family members. McEwen takes one all-important miscommunication on a wedding night and shows how it can ruin lives. He puts a spotlight on the road not taken, and challenges us to rethink how it might have been otherwise.
  
  I am awed by this book. McEwan is a master, a compelling and powerful storyteller, with an all-important message to convey. Read this novel; hear this lament; sing it silently in your mind's ear whenever you are tempted to strike back in anger at some wrong you think was unmistakably meant directly to harm you. Think again. Grow up. It's not about you! Loved ones generally act first and foremost out of their own self-interest, not out of any kind of desire to hurt the beloved. Realize that there is probably a significant miscommunication at the root of the problem and find out what it is before you act too hastily and with anger. Let the heartfelt lament of this book fuse itself to your being. Maybe this book will help you save an important relationship from failure, help you avoid your next--and perhaps most regrettable--road not taken.
  
  
• Character-driven, dramatic writing at its finest.
  By A2XB003LEN0EPY on 2007-06-21
  Ian McEwan's "On Chesil Beach" is a dimunitive masterpiece. In his last novel, "Saturday," McEwan confined his plot to a single, momentous day in the lives of his characters. "On Chesil Beach" further pares down the plot timeline to a couple of hours that forever change the lives of two newlyweds, Edward and Florence, on their wedding night, on the verge of -- but not quite in the midst of -- the sexual revolution of the 1960s.
  
  I'll admit to being quite a fan of Mr. McEwan's fiction. I've read nearly everything that he has written (at least everything that I could get my hands on), starting with "Atonement," which ranks among my all-time favorite novels, and working back through his catalogue. He is, in short, one of the finest novelists writing today. His prose is elegant and graceful, but never mannered or obtrusive. His writing is wonderfully transparent; he is a virtuosic stylist, but never draws attention to his artistry. The text flows with such supple and natural ease that every word seems both necessary and inevitable. He writes with great economy, but is never cryptic or obtuse.
  
  His plots often spin out from, or in towards, a single, defining moment in the lives of his complex and fully wrought characters. The power of a simple gesture, a facial expression, a few words carelessly spoken or withheld to alter intricately entwined fates is gradually, tantalizingly revealed. To surround and support this central event, he seamlessly weaves in asides and flashbacks that both flesh out his characters and firmly establish the era of which he writes. He deftly introduces issues of class, gender, politics and history, and he focuses on the conflicting motivations and emotions that we all must deal with, both individually and in society with one another. In the case of Edward and Florence, the two young lovers are trapped by their inability to communicate, and torn between genuine, self-giving love for each other and the equally compelling selfish desire to maintain appearances. It is a great tribute to his considerable skills at characterization that the reader ends up endorsing, and condemning, both characters in equal measure. We appreciate and applaud the noble sentiments and actions of both Edward and Florence; we understand and commiserate with their all-too human foibles.
  
  
• WORST HONEYMOON EVER!
  By A1LVZOK9F7K4CN on 2007-07-03
  "They were young, educated, and both virgins on this, their wedding night, and they lived in a time when a conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible." This is the opening sentence of Ian McEwan's short, heartbreaking novel, On Chesil Beach. The virginal protagonists are Edward and Florence. McEwan is at great pains to show that these are two "normal" people. Edward is not a closeted homosexual - he's actually something of a he-man. Florence is not unenlightened. It is not even religion that has caused this state of affairs (they both seem to be atheists). It may be hard for people in the twenty-first century to believe, but there was a time - and not so very long ago - when it was the norm for people to be virgins on their wedding night. McEwan is also at pains to point out that, if they had been born but a few years later, they might not have had these problems.
  
  I knew from the advance press that this book was about "the worst honeymoon ever." Even that seems to be an understatement, once you read the book. In true McEwan fashion though, it is impossible to predict exactly where the story will lead. McEwan seems to be focusing on increasingly smaller intervals of time in his novels - Saturday was about one day and this novel is (more or less) about one evening. There is very little "plot" per se, but that isn't the point. On Chesil Beach is a character study - the reader spends very little time in the "present." Instead, we get to know these people and why they are the way they are. One of the main selling points of the novel is, of course, McEwan's prose - even though this isn't a plot-driven novel, I was riveted from the beginning.
  
  
  
  
  
• Love means never having to say...
  By AR9GZ8B7NJJPN on 2007-08-09
  I'm sorry, but what else can you say about a 22-year-old wife who ran away? And who took almost 200 pages to do so, leaving her drooling groom and an untold number of readers on a beach filled with literary quicksand, struggling to find a likeable character or a redeeming bit of plot?
  
  As I finished this book, I found myself humming "Where do I begin?" (the theme song from the movie version of Love Story). The similarities between that book and Chesil include length (both books barely squeak past 200 pages) and an ill-fated romance marked by different socioeconomic backgrounds and music. But Edward and Florence are no Oliver and Jenny, and anyone who sheds tears at the end of Chesil is probably mourning the loss of $22 (even the $13.20 amazon price seems steep.) I admire spare, chiseled prose, but McEwan's stiff, unyielding dialog feels wooden rather than trenchant. The book reads like a period piece, a stylized sitting room drama from the turn of the last century.
  
  Was Florence molested by her repulsive father? Possibly. But McEwan does his best to depict Edward as a pretty unappetizing boyfriend/husband. Was Edward's inability to sense his bride's emotional state a result of his growing up with a brain-damaged mother in a pigsty of a house? Does it matter? (I have to admit that the description of the mess was probably my favorite part of this otherwise unappealing book.) Though the story describes their courtship, the relationship has so little sizzle that it's hard to understand how the two of them managed to work up the energy to go through with a wedding.
  
  After dragging us through the beach spat (their first and only fight? and even that lacked spirit), McEwan decides to take the easy way out. So much for enduring love. While I can accept the premise for most of the book--the stilted, boring couple, the unpleasant parents, the wedding night jitters--a lifelong estrangement defies all experience and common sense. My impression was that McEwan was as tired of these colorless whiners as I was.
  
  Finally, the big question: how did this book ever get published? That's a rhetorical question, of course. If anyone else had written this book and managed to get it into the hands of a publisher, he would have been told "nice treatment--shows a lot of promise--bring it back when you're finished." But when you're Ian "Booker Prize" McEwan, editors may be a little too kind. As Ian himself might say, the result can be downright nauseous.
  
  
• Neurotic Waste of Time
  By A1XO5AGWPVT9KV on 2007-08-12
  This book was a neurotic waste of time! You don't need a novel to tell you how important it is to communicate with others.
  
  
• Memorable, often funny, but with a flawed ending
  By A3P6DREMKG240L on 2007-08-13
  It's difficult to know just what to call this. It's really not long enough to be a novel and bit too long for a novella. The reduced trim size and generous white space makes the book seems longer than it really is. The author poses this question: can a first rank concert violinist find happiness with a a husband whose love of music begins with Chuck Berry singing "Roll Over Beethoven"?
  By now, you've read enough about the plot from others so that I can skip over that. McEwan displays his usual verbal skills through his meticulous choice of words. Others have reacted to this book with words such as "sad" "tragic" and so on. I think they missed what I consider McEwan's deadpan humor. Some of the internal struggles between Edward and Florence are actually quite funny and I believe that that is the author's intent. I think McEwan had a fine time writing this book. As we read through the wedding night of these two virgins and their earlier lives through flashbacks, we can see that McEwan is really exploring a typical British theme: that of class distinction. Edward knows the names of all the flowers and shrubs and birds. He is a man of the earth. But he wouldn't know a Strad from a Guarneri from an Amati. Florence's quartet plays one of the Razumovsky quartets so beautifully, that her teacher has urged her to pursue a career in that field. Her group's Mozart viola quintet is superb. Edward is too busy listening to Chuck Berry.
  In many ways,this is a British drawing room farce. I think that many readers don't get it. That McEwan writes beautifully is beyond discussion. The book is memorable for the characters, the sly humor and his depiction of British class rigidity. Where it goes wrong, in my opinion, is in the ending and I really can't say more without giving away tne ending.
  
  
• McEwan's Most Disappointing Work
  By A3UZJ6YR9B6UKC on 2007-08-19
  Although the cover of "On Chesil Beach" claims this is a novel, it is most definitely a novella. Yes, the book is 203 pages in length, but contains small pages who's margins are wide and who's print is quite large. I read the entire affair in less than two hours.
  
  Due to its length, McEwan has little time to develop the plot or the two main characters. What first appears to be the love story between well-to-do Florence and working class Edward quickly turns into the chronicle of their irregular honeymoon night.
  
  I was expecting so much more from McEwan, who has impressed me with his plot twists in "Atonement" and more recently in "Saturday". If you are a die-hard Ian McEwan fan, check this one out of the library...you'll have it back on their shelves in less than two hours. There's much better work out there by this author.
  
  
• Chesil Beach = Boring Beach
  By A1160ZX08NCGRP on 2007-09-19
  This was so boring that I kept skipping pages at a time - which is something I never do. And, I have always been frustrated when a couple in love don't communicate - and this is a classic non-communication "love" story. Very frustrating.
  
  
• Sun, sea and melancholy
  By AIIR8E34EDKCQ on 2008-07-13
  The book itself is rather small in stature but when the story started my attention was instantly saturated with powerful intensity for it. I found this novel to be quite extraordinary and read it in one sitting - right after having oysters for brunch; I left ready and pounced on it ferociously and enjoyed it until dusk arrived. This was my first time reading McEwan and I found his language, ideas and wording very easy to slip into. Some authors requite an adjustment, sometimes it feels like a change of latitude and climate, even gravity but not with Ian, it's hard for me to imagine anyone who's not curios about life that would not enjoy this.
  
  It's a brief novel set in the 1960's, all I knew about it before I read it was that I spotted it on the New York Times Saturday Book Review ( my favorite) bestsellers section and the simple mention of a wedding night going horribly wrong hooked me. This indeed was a mess slowly unraveling, making me read on nervously knowing that something ugly is about to perspire. The story starts of gently enough but pretty soon the reader gets a real glimpse of Florence, the young bride, and her revulsion of all things having to do with the secrets of the flesh. Even before she married Edward her love for him was warm and pleasant, almost maternal but a few hours after the wedding during their supper, being able to see the freshly made bed in the next room of their honeymoon suite was making her nauseous and fearful of disappointing her new husband with her true feelings concerning the dreaded wedding night.
  
  The acting between Florence and Edward that takes place, the restrained talk and emotions when Edward can barely stand not pouncing on his bride while eating, the dance like charade skillfully played by almost petrified Florence and the glimpses back on how they met set up a heck of a story, the reader knows that things are about to go badly for both of them. Either the bride goes with the flow and makes the best of her situation or she offends Edward and shows him her true feelings. The energy generated by minimal dialogue, sensitive writing and skillful psychology made for an incredibly alluring and mesmerizing book. This isn't only about committing the act, it was more about human errs and not being true and honest with one self, trying to act according to the times and not engaging in close contact with your partner, not understanding who he is until marriage. One can easily see how this type of a scenario can make for hair rising fiction (even scarier, it was probably true back then).
  
  Living in different times makes it easy for me to judge, through out the book I kept thinking "I would never do that" or " I can't even imagine feeling like this woman" but I still connected with her, feeling sorry for her and being angry at her at the same time. This is a treat not to be missed, skillfully written and well told, a story that truly feeds the soul.
  
  - Kasia S.
  
  
  

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