On Chesil Beach - Ian McEwan

Oh so that's how women think! [not really] (367 words)
by username2003 - written on 11/01/09, updated on 11/01/09 (Very useful, 63 readings)
Rating:

On Chesil Beach is a short but exceptionally powerful Novella from Ian McEwan, who is through work such as Atonement and Saturday generaally regarding as one of the United Kingdom s finest writers. I should just say that I have mixed feelings about the two book above and McEwan s other work. So the star rating from me reflects how much I enjoyed this story despite not being a fan of his generally. The story has at its centrepiece the honeymoon and specifically the wedding night of a young married couple Edward and Florence. It is set in 1962, so just before Beetlemania and the Swinging Sixites. It is in many ways a story about the ending of the post war era and of ...

On Chesil Beach - Ian McEwan

What's going to happen on the wedding night? (661 words)
by FairyG - written on 02/11/08, updated on 30/06/09 (Very useful, 105 readings)
Rating:

The Observer reviewer refers to On Chesil Beach as 'a short sharp shock of a story', which is wonderfully accurate. The opening lines of the book plunge the reader straight into the heart of the story: 'They were young, educated, and both virgins on this, their wedding night, and they lived in a time when a conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible.' Edward and Florence, in July 1962, have arrived at their hotel suite at a Georgian inn on the Dorset coast after their Oxford wedding. The four poster bed looms in the next room, its bedcover 'pure white and stretched startlingly smooth, as though by no human hand'. The purity and whiteness signifies ...

Atonement - Ian McEwan

Forgivable, I suppose. (562 words)
by pje - written on 19/02/02, updated on 01/04/02 (Very useful, 571 readings)
Rating:

go-between Briony reads it, and later uses it to devastating effect - doing the dark deed for which she will spend her lifetime trying to atone. Ian McEwan is a terrific writer, but the themes here seem oh-so familiar. Why is he writing about such old-fashioned stilted English tripe? I asked myself at one point. Part Two takes us forward to the evacuation at Dunkirk in World War II, and the terrible chaos as troops tried to make it to the beach. War. What is it good for? Absolutely millions of novels. If there's one thing as hackneyed as writers writing about writers, it's ...