On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
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Book Reviews of On Chesil Beach
Book Review: Outstanding
Summary: 5 Stars
After his brilliant novel Atonement(that not even a horrible movie based on it manged to destroy), I was weary of reading anything else by Ian McEwan. You never know if a writer is one of those people who manage to create one great work of literature and then keep trying to feed on its fame. Still, I decided to risk being disappointed with McEwan's On Chesil Beach. It turned out to be one of the best reading decisions I could have made.
On Chesil Beach is a fantastic novel. It tells the story of two newlyweds who, on their wedding day in the summer of 1962, are preparing to have sex for the first time in both of their lives. Neither of them knows what sex is like, they are both scared, and the bride finds the idea of having sex with the groom extremely disgusting, in spite of thinking that she "loves" him. The couple's lack of knowledge about sex turns their wedding night into an unmitigated disaster.
If it seems surprising to you that in 1962, of all times, anybody would be naive enough to mistake something like this for love and even want to get married on the basis of such an evident lack of physical desire, think about how many people buy into the religious propaganda of abstinence before marriage. Imagine how many people - even today - are going through the following self-torture for the sake of some vaguely defined social requirements: "They whispered their 'I love yous.' It soothed her to be invoking, however quietly, the unfading formula that bound them, and that surely proved their interests were identical. She wondered if perhaps she might even make it through, and be strong enough to pretend convincingly, and on later, successive occasions whittle her anxieties away through sheer familiarity, until she could honestly find and give pleasure."
It becomes clear soon enough that where desire is lacking, there can be no love. The struggle to understand the other person, resolve problems, forgive, try to figure things out is fruitless if people do not experience a powerful physical attraction to each other. If this kind of desire is lacking, the motivation to keep trying is just as big as the one a person would have with a neighbor or a simple acquaintance. As a result, Florence and Edward discover that their relationship dies a painful but a very fast death in the first few hours of their marriage.
I believe that any sex ed in high schools should begin by an obligatory reading of On Chesil Beach. There are so many people even today who mess up their lives completely because they mistake simple friendship for love and try to force a romantic, physical relationship where there is no foundation for it in actual physical desire. There are many people who, like Florence, force themselves to suffer through sexual acts with people they find repulsive for the sake of this castrated definition of love.
As hilarious as this book is, it also raises some very important issues. On Chesil Beach is one of the most insightful things I have read in a long time about the crippling nature of the puritanical understanding of love.
Book Review: On Chesil Beach-A short novel which is on target to capture the love of its readers
Summary: 5 Stars
On Chesil Beach is another short novel by the fine English novelist Ian McEwan. As he has done so often before the novelist has the ability to focus on the defnining moment in a relationship. He does this with lush prose used to tell this poignant tale of lost love, impatience and lost opportunities. This feeling of "what might have been if only..." resonates with this critic and the hoardes of eager McEwan fans who enjoy intellectually sharp tales well told by a master of the craft.
Edward is 23 and his longtime fiance Florence is 22. The two are honeymooning at a hotel near Dorset in the English West Country. Both of these bright young people are sexually inexperienced virgins. Edward comes from the home of a dysfunctional familiy. His father is an underpaid schoolmaster; his mother has mental problems; his siblings bore him. Edward gets a first in History and meets Florence in Oxford. He is smitten with her big boned beauty and interest in preventing nuclear warfare. The two decorously begin a prim and proper romantic relationship. Some kissing and fondling occur but no sexual intercourse.
Florence is an outstanding musician who graduates from the Royal Academy of Music. Her string quartet is on the way up the musical ladder. She is very prim and straight-laced. She fears intimacy with a man even though she loves him very much. Florence comes from a wealthy family but Edward has no trouble ingratiating himself with her well heeled flock.
On Chesil Beach occurs on their first night together as husband and wife. They suffer through a routine meal knowing their initiation in sex awaits in the marital bed. A terrible incident occurs when Florence provokes Edward into an early orgasm. This situation leads to their ultimate estrangement. Years later Edward will look back and realize if he had only been more patient with Florence their lives would have been happier. Edward knows that he has never loved anyone as much as Florence but it is too late to revive his relationship with her. Like all of us we all have regrets as we grow older.
The novel is filled with flashbacks to the pasts of Edward and Florence helping the reader to understand what motivates these two characters We also return to the more formal era of the early 1960s which McEwan introduces through the means of hotel guests commenting on the news on the hotel's televison. This era of propriety now seems so distant in our anything goes amoral society.
McEwan has a few brief sex scenes but they are tastefully and sensitively presented. He has a keen eye for the beauties of nature and also is keen in his love for and appreciation for classical music.
This novel is short but one which will stick in your mind for years to come. Edward and Florence are two of McEwan's best characters. Romeo and Juliet were not the last star-crossed lovers in fiction as this smart novel shows us so well!
Book Review: Tight With Emotional Suspense
Summary: 5 Stars
As in his previous book SATURDAY, Ian McEwan expands a short amount of time into book length through an intense exploration of the emotions of the characters. This time around, the time frame is even shorter, a mere evening between Edward and Florence, on their honeymoon the night of their wedding. Although we begin in a small room where the newlyweds are dining, it is the next room, with the four poster bed waiting, that brings the tension to the fore. You see, our new husband and wife have, to put it simply, seriously divergent attitudes and expectations about the consummation of their relationship.
Edward can barely hold himself back from pouncing on his beautiful wife, who only hours ago had vowed, in front of numerous witnesses - and in a church, no less - that `with my body, I thee worship.' Florence, however, is a different matter. She is a true character study whose feelings on the matter go way, way beyond wedding night jitters. The thought of the act of penetration is not merely repulsive physically, but repulses and terrifies her at the deepest core of her being. If she did not exactly lie at the altar, she simply lacked the willpower to be more honest with herself long before the two ever got there.
McEwan's writing is captivating, drawing the reader into the intricacies of the relationship between Edward and Florence, as well as their backgrounds and personalities that provide the context of it. The action unfolds at an agonizingly slow pace, with McEwan drawing very narrow margins for emotional error. As in SATURDAY, one cannot help but be struck at how even a small decision has such large emotional consequences.
ON CHESIL BEACH takes place in 1962, prior to the sexual revolution. Yet it is difficult to imagine how that revolution would have produced a different outcome. Yes, Edward and Florence could not communicate, both wound tight within the cultural expectations of the time. Yet the problem obviously goes much deeper, to the issue of exactly what is not being communicated. Perhaps at a later date, the events of the book would never have taken place, as their incompatibility would have come to light long before it reached this point. Setting the book at a later date would have made it more unrealistic. And although painful to read at times, ON CHESIL BEACH's realism is all too stark. I highly recommend it.
Also recommended: Saturday
Book Review: The power of words. The power of misunderstanding.
Summary: 5 Stars
In "On Chesil Beach" Ian McEwan, as usually, delivers what expected of him. Exeptionally good literature, exceptionally good character study and background.
Florence, a violinist, and Edward, a historian, young college graduates and, what is more important, newlyweds, are about to spend their first night together. The honeymoon started well, they are in a hotel suite overlooking the beach, but none of them is happy - they fear what happens when they attempt intercourse., And, although they fear for totally different reasons (or maybe partly because of this?) it leads them to the tragic misunderstanding and puts the end to their marriage.
McEwan, like in his previous novel, "Saturday", connects the central conflict between the pair of protagonists with the place and time of their life, and their social status. Again, he comes back to his point that we are trapped in our era and culture and most of us cannot find the way out. This new novel is very precisely set in 1962, a year before the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles' first LP. The young people still live according to old rules, but long for something new, something undefined and tempting, and at the same time are afraid of it. The tale told here belongs to the epoch, but at the same time is as universal and timeless as we can only imagine. It is a simple story about two people, very much in love and seemingly at the beginning of a very happy, successful married life, who shatter everything because of their assumptions, inability to communicate and to open to each other's feelings, and lack of understanding. The spoken and unspoken words change their lives without a chance for a change. The tragedy is not only their view of each other, but - and this is essential - their ignorance of their own feelings and characters, which they do not know themselves (example: Florence's own belief in her frigidity) - and when they learn who they really are, it is too late.
McEwans language is, as usual, crystal clear and precise. The narrative is disciplined and transparent. There are just enough words for this short (but not too short) novel to be perfect. The dialogues flow and there is nothing superfluous, nothing redundant, every word is accounted for. The story is perfectly constructed, flawless - but not without some winks towards the reader, like a temptation after the climax to read on to the end... hoping for a change, although knowing what the end will be. Superb.
Book Review: Sublime...my choice for the Booker last year
Summary: 5 Stars
Ian McEwan is the only contemporary fiction writer today with the talent and the craft to transform what in lesser hands might pass for a rather slight novella into a tremulous, gorgeously detailed work of art. "On Chesil Beach" may be less ambitious in its scope than McEwan's earlier masterpieces such as "Atonement" but it is no less satisfying for the effect it strives to achieve. McEwan isn't a writer who grows on you. His writing strictly eschews sentiment, so the reader expecting to be moved should look elsewhere. His words - razor sharp, cold and brutal - either hit you like an ice pick on the forehead or leave you with an unpleasant aftertaste.
It is also his favorite thing to use copious amounts of page space to display in slow motion every flicker of thought or emotion running through the minds of his characters. In "Saturday", the opening night scene of the protagonist observing the descent of an airplane from his bedroom takes up more pages than one would imagine. We get plenty of that kind of thing here.
Ironically perhaps, the thwarted lives of Edward and Florence must seem the saddest story ever told. Born into an age when sex expects to follow love in marriage like hand in glove, the quiet desperation consuming the couple as they head for the bridal chambers on their wedding night, each not knowing what to do, yet willing himself/herself to do the right thing by the other, becomes the subject of this deceptively slight novella. McEwan is in his usual commanding form, wielding his arsenal of killer sharp precision words to devastating effect to achieve just the right nuances. He reveals a comic side in an unexpected scene when Edward deliberately conjures up Joseph Stalin's face in his mind's eye to avoid his first calamity. An unbelievable sleight of hand ! As the narrative lurches fatefully towards its inevitable conclusion, McEwan uses flashback to plug the gap in the couple's back story for us to make sense of their present dilemma.
The wasted lives of Edward and Florence seem a needless cruelty today. McEwan, writing at the top of his game, succeeds in evoking pathos and sadness without the usual mawkishness that accompanies such sentiment. A brilliant book. Most definitely, my choice for the Booker last year !