Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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69 of 77 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A beautiful story about love and loss, 13 Aug 2007
Having failed to connect with Ian McEwan's Saturday, I was in two minds about whether to bother with On Chesil Beach. All I can say is, I'm glad I did.
On Chesil Beach is a beautiful story about love and loss. I thought there was nothing new I could read about sex, but On Chesil Beach focuses on a 1962 pair of newlyweds, approaching their first night together with a mixture of fear and expectation. We learn that the couple barely know one another, and that marriage represents the traditional (but long forgotten) voyage of discovery for them. The couple are slightly anachronistic, perhaps, even in 1962; they know it. But their ignorance has a genuine charm and beauty to it.
Although both Edward and Florence had been to university in London, their backgrounds were different. Edward is from a humble background. He has never even slept in a hotel before and during the year of courtship, he has grown in experience and expectation. Florence is from a wealthy and intelligent home, but her family has embraced Edward with enthusiasm. Their marriage represents a time of great hope and joy.
And to add to the hope and joy, McEwan's language just drips from the page. There is barely a word out of place. He manages to combine effortless poetry with perfect lucidity. He controls the couple's emotions with delicate skill.
The novella as a whole is hard to fault. Being harsh, there is a moment of wavering and vacillation towards the end of Part 4 and start of Part 5 that sits a little awkwardly with the crystal clarity of the rest of the work, but ultimately it is a necessary price for the ultimate conclusion. And when that conclusion comes, it is so intense, so exquisite that it brings tears.
Can this win the Booker? My reservation is not in the quality of the work, but the quantity. It is short to the point of being an extended short story - a novella. This brevity means that character development is minimal - instead, we simply have an exploration of the characters as they find themselves on that single day in 1962. Please don't let that sound like damning with faint praise - it isn't. But I suspect that it might stand between McEwan and a second Booker Prize.
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48 of 57 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A very affecting read, 27 Mar 2007
"On Chesil Beach" takes us into familiar territory as a husband and wife on their wedding night fumble their way through a difficult sexual initiation. The outcome is not a surprise, but those reading this novel should not be seeking the thrill of a roller-coaster plot. As so often, the devil is in the detail. Set at the beginning of the 1960s, before the sexual revolution had arrived to liberate contained libidos, the novel explores the poignancy of sexually disfunctional people whose minimal knowledge and experience of sex were inadequate preparation for the potential pitfalls of physical intimacy. McEwan displays a depth of psychological penetration that as a reader I found satisfying and reassuring. He has clearly imagined and reimagined the scenes of the novel until they are artistically coherent and authentic; and yet, at the same time, he is happy to leave areas of fruitful ambiguity over the contradictions and incoherence of human behaviour. The final section is one of the best-written passages of English prose that I have found in years. This is the first novel I have read in ages that has moved me to tears. Please read it.
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28 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Wonderful Book, 10 April 2007
I have to confess that I have mixed feelings about Ian McEwan. Much of what he writes is wonderful and I have read pretty much everything that he has published. However, I very often find that his books are not quite entirely satisfying - their approach to sexuality is sometimes a little too coarse and uncomfortable, his tendency to write two chapters too many in an effort to tie up loose ends (see Enduring Love, very dissatisfying ending). Whilst 'On Chesil Beach' does share the latter problem, and the narrative voice is often far too worldly, knowing and obtrusive (I would have liked McEwan to have let his characters speak for themselves much more), there is a wonderful force and lyricism to his prose in this book which I felt counter-balanced the grotesque comedy of the 'consummation' beautifully. There is a definite musical quality to the book (echoed in the musical ambitions of Flo) which is mesmerising.
McEwan is at his best when his writing is focused, as it is here and as it is in his short stories, on a single moment in time. In this case, the key scene is the scene that takes place on the beach itself and is heart breaking. McEwan should have stopped the novel there and omitted the final pages in which we are telescoped through the remaining years of the characters' lives.
The book reminded me of The Remains of The Day by Kazuo Ishiguro very strongly in its concern with the greatest English obsessions (sex and sexual relationships) and the greatest English inadequacy (the inability to communicate, especially about emotions and sex).
Despite the few dissatisfactions, however, this is one of McEwan's best books which benefits incredibly for being short, contained and focused. The strength and lyricism of the prose, the understated comedy, the occasion of grotesque physical humour and (at the core of the book) a heart wrenching insight into an emotionally charged and tragically doomed relationship.
Well worth the price tag for its beauty and impact - even if it is only an evening's read, it will stay with you for ages!
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