On Chesil Beach
CDN$ 14.56
The world s longest foreplay - One might expect that in a short 166-page book, major events would occur fairly early on, before the page numbers get too high into the double digits. Well, the action finally takes place after the page numbers hit the triple digits. Prior to that, one can experience the world s most drawn-out demonstration of sexual foreplay. Frankly, while it is wonderful to delve into the personal meaning and history of every shirt button that becomes undone, or the penetration depth of each kiss, most of my first hundred pages was spent wondering, Is something going to happen here already?.Well, it finally does, and the results of the activity help bring the book to a faster, more interesting close, but that s due to the post-carnal chain of events finally making the lead characters address (and run from) their issues, and permits decades of time to be covered in mere sentences.
McEwan s weakest book - Every author is allowed to strike out once in a while.With Chesil Beach, Ian McEwan chose description over dramatization and preaching over provoking thought. He actually tells us what to think, as if we had never considered the negative impact of sexual repression on relationships and marriage, and nothing had happened since the 1950s.Read Black Dogs, Atonement, Saturday, or just about anything else by Mr McEwan, but this is only for those who want to read his complete works.
Ending makes the novel - The novel comes to a slow boil and its ending is quietly devastating in how acutely it paints the haphazard ways our lives turn and how we will never be able to judge if we did the right thing. What literature should be.
Unimpressive - Despite the shortness of this novel, I still found this a difficult book to finish (though the fact that it s not as lengthy as the majority of his novels is the only reason that I did manage to get through the whole book). Holding true with my previous experiences of McEwan s writing, I found the storyline plodding and weighed down with an overabundance of adjectives. It felt as though there was an excess of unnecessary scenes that were included merely to pad the story out as it takes place in the course of one night. Each moment is experienced with excruciating slowness, and then re-tread several times more. I have simply come to the conclusion that I will never understand why McEwan seems to be such a popular writer, I ve found nothing in his books that would warrant the praise that I ve heard given to him.
What a difference a decade makes - Was anyone ever as naive and blundering as Florence and Edward? These two young people in their early twenties demonstrate a depth of ignorance that dooms their wedding night. Ian McEwan s novella ON CHESIL BEACH covers the few hours in 1962 during which Florence and Edward eat a mediocre wedding dinner in a hotel suite, move to the bedroom where they botch the whole thing badly, and fail to say the one thing, offer the one reconciliaton that could have saved them.The overriding gift of this little book is McEwan s beautiful writing, which truly takes center stage. The plot is closely contained within Florence and Edward s relationship and the events of their wedding night, and there is barely enough supporting documentation to justify his clumsiness and her terror.The point is universally made by reviewers that all this was before the Sexual Revolution of the sixties and early seventies. It hardly seems enough to explain the complete lack of communication between these two, and especially Florence s fear of sex. McEwan throws out a few clues about the relationship between Florence and her father but chooses not to develop them, and it s a noticeable choice in such a short book.Another choice McEwan made was to define the story so closely. ON CHESIL BEACH is unusual in this regard: it s a book that could have been longer. After the fine dissection of the wedding night, the last section pelts through several decades, as if the only thing about these two worth discussing was over and done with. The harsh last minutes of the wedding night, on the beach, might have been a fulcrum point for a longer story. That was not McEwans choice, however.As a character study and an exquisitely disciplined exercise, ON CHESIL BEACH comes through beautifully and is a strong contender for another Booker Prize for McEwan. Yes, there are questions unanswered, but you have to suppose that was McEwan s intent all along. This is a book to be remembered and mused over for a long time.