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Loading... On Chesil Beachby Ian McEwan
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. sad. very enjoyable to read, though, beautiful writing. i will start another book by him today. good thing hubby has a few. i don't think she was frigid, i think they just needed a sex therapist. me, for example. (  ) bookscentlover | Feb 9, 2010 |  Let's get the bad point about this book out of the way first. Yes it is short. Some people understandably regarding it as a stretched out short story. And no doubt it you paid full price for this book, you might be left feeling a little short changed. Fortunately for myself I managed to pick this up from the local library, so the lack of length didn't trouble me. It's hard to review this book without giving too much away, but I found this to be a very enjoyable read. Essentially the story is quite a simple one, which probably accounts for why it didn't need many pages to tell it, but it still managed to pack a real punch. Many books have you chasing around trying to piece together the plot and remember who's who. It was refreshing to read this simple tale, yet to be still left with plenty to think about. I thought the ending just sprinkled enough information to adequately wrap up things up, but equally it left enough open ended to leave me wondering and guessing about what happened next (and preceded the events that were told). Yes, this isn't the meatiest of novels, but the fact I'm left wanting to find other people to discuss this novel with, confirms to me that this was a thoroughly worthwhile read. ( ) saltybooks | Feb 8, 2010 | Excellent book. A tough read in many ways, but a moving one. It deals with a wedding night that took place before sexual frankness was common. It also shows us the lives of the couple involved leading up to and from that fateful moment. (  ) latepaul | Feb 5, 2010 | Interesting short story that if anybody described the 'plot' to me I would think it would bore me to tears. It didn't though and I found I wanted to keep reading because I had no idea where the story was going. It was well written and very thought provoking. (  ) Fluffyblue | Feb 3, 2010 | I set down We Need to Talk About Kevin in order to read something a little lighter. Ha. Right. Saturday, McEwan’s previous novel, captivated me. McEwan took a close look at a single day in a man’s life. In On Chesil Beach, McEwan moves in even closer; he looks at a few hours in a couple’s life. Whew. Each move, each word spoken...and suddenly everything has shifted and changed. The alternating points of view, from husband to wife, hones in on the amazingly inaccurate interpretations each makes about the other. So truthful that it’s horribly uncomfortable to read. ( ) debnance | Jan 29, 2010 | 
 On Chesil Beach is brief and carefully plotted, the writing is measured, the tone of voice is forgiving and nostalgic. In other words, it is a fine example of emotion recollected in tranquillity. Even so, I couldn't help regretting the fun McEwan might have had with these sad fumbling innocents when he was younger, less mellow, and a great deal less forbearing.  After two big, ambitious novels — “Atonement” and “Saturday” — Ian McEwan has inexplicably produced a small, sullen, unsatisfying story that possesses none of those earlier books’ emotional wisdom, narrative scope or lovely specificity of detail.
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It is 1962 when Edward and Florence, 23 and 22 respectively, marry and repair to a hotel on the Dorset coast for their honeymoon. They are both virgins, both apprehensive about what's next and in Florence's case, utterly and blindly terrified and repelled by the little she knows. Through a tense dinner in their room, because Florence has decided that the weather is not fine enough to dine on the terrace, they are attended by two local boys acting as waiters. The cameo appearances of the boys and Edward and Florence's parents and siblings serve only to underline the emotional isolation of the two principals. Florence says of herself: "...she lacked some simple mental trick that everyone else had, a mechanism so ordinary that no one ever mentioned it, an immediate sensual connection to people and events, and to her own needs and desires...."
They are on the cusp of a rather ordinary marital undertaking in differing states of readiness, willingness and ardor. McEwan says: "Where he merely suffered conventional first-night nerves, she experienced a visceral dread, a helpless disgust as palpable as seasickness." Edward, having denied himself even the release of self-pleasuring for a week, in order to be tip-top for Florence, is mentally pawing the ground. His sensitivity keeps him from being obvious, but he is getting anxious. Florence, on the other hand, knows that she is not capable of the kind of arousal that will make any of this easy. She has held Edward off for a year, and now the reckoning is upon her.
McEwan is the master of the defining moment, that place and time when, once it has taken place, nothing will ever be the same after it. It does not go well and Florence flees the room. "As she understood it, there were no words to name what had happened, there existed no shared language in which two sane adults could describe such events to each other." Edward eventually follows her and they have a poignant and painful conversation where accusations are made, ugly things are said and roads are taken from which, in the case of these two, the way back cannot be found. Late in Edward's life he realizes: "Love and patience--if only he had them both at once--would surely have seen them both through." This beautifully told sad story could have been conceived and written only by Ian McEwan. --Valerie Ryan
(retrieved from Amazon Tue, 05 Jan 2010 11:43:21 -0500)
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