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On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
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On Chesil Beach

by Ian McEwan

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3,877182623 (3.67)228

Member recommendations

  1. whitewavedarling recommends The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
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English (167)  Dutch (6)  Danish (2)  Swedish (1)  Portuguese (1)  Italian (1)  German (1)  French (1)  Norwegian (1)  Spanish (1)  All languages (182)
Showing 1-5 of 167 (next | show all)
On Chesil Beach is the second work of McEwan I've read, the other, of course, the Awakening. I still like the Awakening better, but I enjoyed this little book. I liked the odd motivations of the characters. The subtly-revealed sexual abuse of the main female character drives nearly everything in the plot. Some previous reviewers, especially the one who gave a brief plot overview, seemed to have missed that and dismissed the character as "psycho."

It was a bit slow to get through at times, though. That's probably my biggest complaint. ( )
  jessicamhill | Dec 22, 2009 |
wow, wow, wow! amazing writer. ( )
  mmillet | Dec 14, 2009 |
Some time after I finished the book, it occurred to me that its plot pretty closely mirrors that of Avril Lavigne's "Sk8er Boi." McEwan may have thought he threw us off the scent by juggling the roles around, but I wasn't fooled. No siree. ( )
  theanalogdivide | Dec 1, 2009 |
Some time after I finished the book, it occurred to me that its plot pretty closely mirrors that of Avril Lavigne's "Sk8er Boi." McEwan may have thought he threw us off the scent by juggling the roles around, but I wasn't fooled. No siree. ( )
  theanalogdivide | Dec 1, 2009 |
Some time after I finished the book, it occurred to me that its plot pretty closely mirrors that of Avril Lavigne's "Sk8er Boi." McEwan may have thought he threw us off the scent by juggling the roles around, but I wasn't fooled. No siree. ( )
  theanalogdivide | Dec 1, 2009 |
Showing 1-5 of 167 (next | show all)
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.
added by jburlinson | editNew York Review of Books, Al Alvarez (pay site) (Jul 19, 2007)
 
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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Epigraph
Dedication
To Annalena
First words
They were young, uneducated, and both virgins on this, their wedding night, and they lived in a time when conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible. But it is never easy.
Quotations
This was still the era - it would end later in that famous decade - when to be young was a social encumbrance, a mark of irrelevance, a faintly embarrassing condition for which marriage was the beginning of a cure.
There was no one she could have talked to. Ruth, her sister, was too young, and her mother, perfectly wonderful in her way, was too intellectual, too brittle, an old-fashioned bluestocking. Whenever she confronted an intimate problem, she tended to adopt the public manner of the lecture hall, and use longer and longer words, and make references to books she thought everyone should have read.
Britain, England, was a minor power - saying this gave a certain blasphemous pleasure. Downstairs, of course, they took a different view. Anyone over forty would have fought, or suffered, in the war and known death on an unusual scale, and would not have been able to believe that a drift into irrelevance was the reward for all the sacrifice.
The term dissolved intimacy, it coolly measured his mother by a public standard that everyone could understand.
It pained him tremendously that their wedding night was not simple, when their love was so obvious.
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On Chesil Beach

Book description

Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0385522401, Hardcover)

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.

(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:51 -0400)

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