On Chesil Beach

On Chesil Beach
by Ian McEwan

On Chesil Beach
List Price: $13.95
Our Price: $2.96
You Save: $10.99 (79%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.75 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions


(Click here)
Buy this book at online book store in your country
Canada | UK | Germany | France

Book Summary Information

Author: Ian McEwan
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2008-06-10
ISBN: 0307386171
Number of pages: 224
Publisher: Anchor

Book Reviews of On Chesil Beach

Book Review: Emotional Pornography
Summary: 2 Stars

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.

Summary of On Chesil Beach

In 1962, Florence and Edward celebrate their wedding in a hotel on the Dorset coast. Yet as they dine, the expectation of their marital duties weighs over them. And unbeknownst to both, the decisions they make this night will resonate throughout their lives. With exquisite prose, Ian McEwan creates in On Chesil Beach a story of lives transformed by a gesture not made or a word not spoken.
Such is Ian McEwan's genius that, despite rambling nature walks and the naming of birds, his subject matter remains hermetically sealed in the hearts of two people.

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

Contemporary Books

Book Subjects
Most talked about in Favorite Books
On Chesil Beach ImageOn Chesil Beach
by Ian McEwan
Anchor; Published: 2008-06-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.19
Price in other shops: $13.95
Of Mice and Men (Steinbeck Centennial Edition) ImageOf Mice and Men (Steinbeck Centennial Edition)
by John Steinbeck
Penguin; Published: 2002-01-08; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.93
Price in other shops: $13.00
Cloudstreet : A Novel ImageCloudstreet : A Novel
by Tim Winton
Scribner; Published: 2002-06-06; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.39
Price in other shops: $16.00
In Cold Blood ImageIn Cold Blood
by Truman Capote
Modern Library; Published: 2002-03-05; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $11.81
Price in other shops: $22.00
Enduring Love: A Novel ImageEnduring Love: A Novel
by Ian McEwan
Anchor; Published: 1998-12-29; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.87
Price in other shops: $13.95
The Book Thief ImageThe Book Thief
by Markus Zusak
Knopf Books for Young Readers; Published: 2007-09-11; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.23
Price in other shops: $11.99
The Catcher in the Rye ImageThe Catcher in the Rye
by J.D. Salinger
Back Bay Books; Published: 2001-01-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.98
Price in other shops: $13.99
To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Perennial Modern Classics) ImageTo Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)
by Harper Lee
Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Published: 2006-06-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.60
Price in other shops: $15.95
Similar Books and other products
The Gravedigger's Daughter: A Novel (P.S.) ImageThe Gravedigger's Daughter: A Novel (P.S.)
by Joyce Carol Oates
Harper Perennial; Published: 2008-04-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.49
Price in other shops: $15.95
The Maytrees: A Novel ImageThe Maytrees: A Novel
by Annie Dillard
Harper Perennial; Published: 2008-06-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.00
Price in other shops: $13.95
The Yiddish Policemen's Union: A Novel (P.S.) ImageThe Yiddish Policemen's Union: A Novel (P.S.)
by Michael Chabon
Harper Perennial; Published: 2008-05-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.85
Price in other shops: $15.95
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao ImageThe Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
by Junot D?az
Penguin Audio; Published: 2007-09-06; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $15.64
Price in other shops: $39.95
Bridge of Sighs: A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries) ImageBridge of Sighs: A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries)
by Richard Russo
Vintage; Published: 2008-08-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.99
Price in other shops: $14.95
Falling Man: A Novel ImageFalling Man: A Novel
by Don DeLillo
Scribner; Published: 2008-06-03; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.27
Price in other shops: $14.00
Out Stealing Horses: A Novel ImageOut Stealing Horses: A Novel
by Per Petterson
Picador; Published: 2008-04-29; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.62
Price in other shops: $14.00
Atonement ImageAtonement
by Ian McEwan
Anchor; Published: 2007-11-27; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.55
Price in other shops: $7.99
Divisadero ImageDivisadero
by Michael Ondaatje
Vintage International; Published: 2008-04-22; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.25
Price in other shops: $13.95
The Gathering (Man Booker Prize) ImageThe Gathering (Man Booker Prize)
by Anne Enright
Grove Press, Black Cat; Published: 2007-09-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.22
Price in other shops: $14.00
Book store. Illustrated catalog of books on different categories