On Chesil Beach

A novella that covers the entire lifetime of an ordinary man whose time was more or less defined by an event at the locale in the book's title. I think Philip Roth started a mini-genre of these short bios with Everyman and again in Indignation. I also like Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending, which this book is most indebted to - with the phantom of a failed romance. Chesil has fine prose and great skill but ultimately it's not all that memorable or meaningful, and the key scene is farcically grotesque in a way that undermines the plain realism of the rest.

Sometimes you read a book from a gifted writer who sails. along on their gift for words. Sometimes you read a book from a gifted storyteller that could be elevated by a gifted wordsmith. This is a book crafted by a gifted storyteller and executed by a stunning wordsmith. It stunning, yet accessible, and difficult to put down.

This small book covers one wedding night yet a lifetime in just 200 pages. It is the story of Florence and Edward who are both virgins on their wedding night in 1962. It is oh so familiar what happens to these two people and the repurcussions of a lifetime that follows.

It is a book that can be read in one sitting but you won't soon forget it. It touched my heart.

This short but compelling read is a thoroughly enjoyable way to spend a weekend. It was not what I expected, but I was pleased with the story. The book's simplicity and beautiful prose are unlike most modern reading.

Mc Ewan is very good at descriptive writing. He successfully captures a very vivid scene. However, the storyline needs some work. It seems very empty and focuses so much on the history of the characters that it neglects to adequately build on the current situation enough. The book seems to be incomplete and ended before its time.

Short and true. A beautiful book about the complexities of relationships.What happened? why did these two young newlyweds end up in this bitter side of love? The author takes you there, to understand and wonder.

Ordinary romance flayed open. Characters peeled to the emotional bone so smoothly and artistically as if taking the skin off an Apple in one piece was second nature. Joyce-ian in his ability to go from broad macro-truths of life to the pubic hair of detail in nearly the same sentence leaves this reader awestruck. A quiet desperation has been laid bare. One night. One moment. Words spoken. Journeys changed. What if....?

Ian McEwan is a master of atmospheric writing, taking a seemingly isolated incident and building a story around it in a way that the reader completely lives in the moment described by his novel. He selects strange topics and then makes them feel so familiar by comparison to each of our lives that exploring the dense background he paints pulls us in like a strong magnet. Reading McEwan is one of the rare pleasures literature lovers find. Few writers of today can match his quiet, subtle, but bravura technique.

ON CHESIL BEACH is essentially a study of a wedding night, a night when the two characters involved approach the virginal consummation of their marriage with disastrous results. Florence is bright, a gifted violinist, beautiful and fragile in affairs of the heart and senses: she is frigid. Edward, her new husband, is of lower class than she, but has reached a degree of education and overcome some thorny family obstacles to become a young bridegroom longing for his marriage night, a night he blunders with premature ejaculation. McEwan leads into this evening and its subsequent resolution on Chesil Beach with delicate prose, brings us to the topic of climax, and then offers flashes of background of each of his characters that allows us to understand the subsequent course of events 'doing nothing' brings.

In beautiful prose, stunningly elegant writing, and rich observations of life in the early 1960s with all that the decade of 'enlightenment' and changes in England and the world produced, Ian McEwan has created another masterpiece. Highly recommended. Grady Harp, August 07

The pace and dramatic tension of this book is magnificent. I can't think of single bad point to make, everything about this book was thoroughly enjoyable, and I've recommended it highly for the past year.

Ian McEwan has a unique style that is not immediately apparent. Because his stories are deceptively simple and straightforward, it is only after the final page that the true power of his writing shows its strength. Chesil Beach, like Atonement before it, lingers in the mind weeks later with its mixture of guilt, regret, missed opportunity. The only writers who come close to approaching this haunting quality are Grahame Swift and John Banville.

I read Amsterdam (loved it) and Saturday (hated it) and chose "On Chesil Beach" to break the tie. The writing style is immediately recognizable as Ian McEwan's. Surely there are eloquent phrases and captivating descriptions. But the sentences are long-winded, the character observations ring cliché, and the story line is not believable. The characters are the usual McEwan characters - upper class or aspirational middle class, very successful, or at the brink of success, but oh so tormented and unhappy. The story-telling is slow and the dénouement, written hastily, is anti-climactic. The story idea was interesting enough, but the end result left me unsatisfied.

The book is fascinating reading and an indictment against repressed sexuality. An earlier period than the 1960s might have been more realistic. I grew up in the 1950s, admittedly not in England. My friends and I were sexually more liberated as were the girls I dated. But perhaps I was lucky to not live in England, to have the right friends, and to date the right girls!

A good story, well told right up to its unfeasable ending. It beggars belief that this couple, with their history and love for each other, would not try again or even see each other ever again, simply because of what occurred and was said on their wedding night. A sorry ending in more ways than one.

I liked this book because it was full of surprises that I wasn't anticipating. I got this book for school because it was a required read, but if I could I would give this book a 10/10 cause I enjoyed it :) The book wasn't damaged or torn and it looked fairly new. Overall I had a great experience both with buying the book and reading it.

very well written novel with a compact time frame...interesting in that it leaves you still with questions about the deeper emotions of the characters involved...a novel that could easily be read over a weekend

The book topics seems an unlikely one. A marriage goes bad on one bad wedding night. The book illumines love gone wrong, the way that distorted ideas about sexuality (both his and hers in this case) can harm a marriage. Well worth the read, especially for couples preparing for marriage.

i didnt give it 5 stars because the conclusion was one sided it was abeautiful read sadly probably a truereflection of its period demonstrates the difficulty society has getting a balance in this area .have we swung too much the other way .it had touches of a true greek tragedy in that the cause of the tragedy lay IN the characters themselves & not in an external event off course our concept of trgedy has broadened since then to include the kitchen sink characters but maybe we are all in essence truley noble in our own hearts

This novel is about love ruined by polite, prim manners and a lack of communication at a time when the sexual revolution of the sixties was just beginning. Being born around the time the protagonist were born, I can relate to that time. Beautifully written.

On Chesil Beach achieves its suspense with romance, mystery and imagination, and brilliant tricks and turns. McEwan's shows one more time his ability to isolate discrete moments in a life and invest them with deep significance.

After reading "Atonement" I was so excited to get another book from this author. I was very disappointed. The plot was less than intriguing and the content dragged. The first chapter kept me reading for a bit, but i skipped every other chapter that only prolonged the disappointing and strange outcome of the story. I definitely wish I had the little amount of time that I spent reading this book back so that I could read something else.

For me, Atonement is the pinacle of McEwan's writing. After reading Atonement I read his previous novels and for the most part liked them very much as well, especially because they were leading up to Atonement.
But On Chelsea Beach was even more boring though not as dissapointing as Saturday. Unbelievably boring that is. I finished it because, because.........I really don't know why. I hate the direction McEwans writing has taken.

This is an absurd and pretentious little book and tedious beyond bearing. I find it hard to believe that any person not suffering from confused sexual orientation or some sort of previous trauma could possibly be as repulsed by sex as is the woman in this book. It's certainly not because it was 1962, which was as lusty--possibly lustier--than after the explosion of the "sexual revolution," which really only happened because women finally had control of avoiding conception, syphillus could be cured with anti-biotics, and sexually transmitted diseases weren't publicized. And, honestly, no woman would ever have written this self-important, desperately literary little novel!

If your looking for insightful, intraspective, self-important blabbering in this review, warning: don't read mine! I tell it like I see it, with simplicity and straightforwardness. I was very disappointed by this "short story". I was so excited to read it because of the how much I enjoyed Atonement, and the great review this book received from NBC's Today Show, but was sadly disappointed. I kept having to remind myself that this book was set in the 1960's, not the 1860's, as it seemed quite unbelievable. Just plain dumb, and revoltingly/unneccessarily graphic descriptions where they just weren't needed. Yuck-save your money and purchase A Thousand Splendid Suns instead!!!!!