Customer Reviews

On Chesil Beach: A Novel -- First 1st U.S. Edition w/ Dust Jacket

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Married now on that first night, their honeymoon, "they were alone then, and theoretically free to do whatever they wanted, but they went on eating dinner they had no appetite for."

Quirkily you are sure that it is the mid 1800's and that Florence is in a long high-necked dress, and Edward is in an overly starched white shirt and very well creased black pants to match his suit coat. But no, it is the mid 1900's.

At just over 200 pages, McEwan deftly makes Florence and Edward so believably real and their character deep and complex. Ian McEwan has the artistry to turn a single day into a full rich story of Florence and Edward's every nuance, gesture and tone. The story is deeply beautiful and sad.

Ahh, sometimes the worst thing is to say nothing at all.

I do. And I'd find it hard to credit the verisimilitude of the two main characters in this novella if I didn't. Author Ian McEwan plainly intends us to be 'bemused' by the remoteness of his characters' dilemma from any experiences familiar to readers born too late to remember 1962. His literary evocation of the 'consciousness' of his newlyweds, Florence and Edward - overly intelligent, utterly naive 22-year-old Brits - is the best part of this book, but it's not enough to compensate for the febrility of the story.

Given that the stock of real Victorian novels is as limited as petroleum reserves, and that many avid novel readers have already exhausted it, it's no wonder that Ian McEwan is popular. "On Chesil Beach" is fundamentally a Victorian novel, and not just because the leading lady in it, Florence, is burdened with Victorian sensibilities, but also because the author passes just the kind of moral judgement on his own characters that George Eliot might have passed. Oh, mention is made of pubic hair and engorged penises, but it's still an archaic structure of a novel. Imagine all the "implicit" sexuality of a novel by Austen or Trollope, make it explicit on a bed with silk sheets, and you have Ian McEwan. Genteel voyeurism, ladies and gents!

The story told by "On Chesil Beach" is of a couple on their wedding night, with ample flashbacks to their earlier lives and courtship. They're both virgins. She is preposterously repressed. Intercourse fails, they flee from each other, and neither ever recovers from the trauma. The central bedroom catastrophe might have made a decent short story, but the flashbacks are mere back-fill, and the final chapter, rushing through the next forty years of the characters' lives, is schematic, smug, and dull.

This small used book was in beautiful condition and reminded me of the Modern Library editions I used to buy many years ago. It is a treat to have a little portable book that is not a paperback. Thank you, seller, for taking such good care of it.

Ian McEwan has a brilliant mind, capable of illustrating wonderfully those intangible emotions of the individual. Somehow he makes it all tangible... this book captures.

It is a little succinct powerhouse.