On Chesil Beach: Ian McEwan

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being in love was not a steady state, but a matter of fresh surges or waves, and he was experiencing one now." Svetlana Sterlin (14 October 2020). "On Chesil Beach could have been perfect with these 2 changes". Our Culture Mag . Retrieved 5 August 2021.

On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan | Goodreads On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan | Goodreads

It is clinical and understated from the start: “The wedding... had gone well” and the “weather... not perfect but entirely adequate” and continues in the bedroom with detailed descriptions of physical sensations of skin, muscle, and even individual hairs: “stroking... for more than one and a half minutes” (too precise). Ian McEwan's prose is beautiful as ever in this novella. He belongs to those writers you only have to read a few sentences from and immediately know they have been written by him. There is something powerful behind the words he chooses, something that makes you care for the characters even if it is sometimes difficult to understand their motivations. This simple story is able to say so much about human nature: how it is mandatory to talk to each other honestly about one's fears and feelings, because remaining silent could almost never lead into a happy future.

The significant difference is that there was more afterstory than I remember. That didn't feel necessary, and in particular, the fact that in the film, Florence went on to have three children, starting very soon after the annulment of her marriage to Edward, totally changes the causes and consequences of what went wrong on their wedding night. They are more or less in love and they are getting married because it’s what you do. “This was still the era…when to be young was a social encumbrance, a mark of irrelevance, a faintly embarrassing condition for which marriage was the beginning of a cure.” The situation is miniature and enormous, dire and pathetic, tender and irrevocable. McEwan treats it with a boundless sympathy, one that enlists the reader even as it disguises the fact that this seeming novel of manners is as fundamentally a horror novel as any McEwan’s written, one that carries with it a David Cronenberg sensitivity to what McEwan calls "the secret affair between disgust and joy. " (…) If On Chesil Beach is a horror novel, it is also as fundamentally a comedy, one with virtual Monty Python overtones" - Jonathan Lethem, The New York Times Book Review

On Chesil Beach - Ian McEwan - Complete Review On Chesil Beach - Ian McEwan - Complete Review

On Chesil Beach is a linguistic balancing act, each sentence delicately positioning itself both by historical co-ordinates -- an early-Sixties world of Austin 35s and wireless news bulletins -- and by more private reference points -- the separate anxieties and assumptions of the young bride and groom. McEwan, as Atonement demonstrated, is at his best with this finely tuned historical pastiche. The period detail allows him some virtuosic touches (…..) McEwan's forensic account of the warring couple's partialities (…) is perfectly constructed, but fails to throw off the feel of a private technical exercise. In a novel so reliant on bias and conviction, a little more authorly engagement would be welcome." - Rachel Aspden, New Statesman Yardley, Jonathan (2 December 2007). "Jonathan Yardley". Washington Post . Retrieved 29 January 2019. Edward is quiet but (in the past) occasionally explosive, a history graduate from a rural “squalid family home” with a brain damaged mother. Finally, the time arrives to consummate the marriage. However, it is rather short-lived as Florence accidentally overstimulates Edward, causing him to ejaculate all over her body before they even have sex. This disgusts Florence on many levels, and she storms out. Edward goes after Florence to discuss what has happened and they have a heated argument. By the end of it, Florence has made it clear that she has no interest in ever having sex. Edward has some sense of Florence's qualms, but he's so over-excited about finally getting this far that he doesn't pay enough attention.The author tells us “the pill was only a rumor.” They had no opportunity for intimacy while dating. While in school in London he lived in a room in the house of a strict aunt. She lived in a women’s rooming house with a dorm mother keeping watch, no men allowed. Few young people had cars. Connelly, Brendan (5 November 2011). "Mike Newell Takes Over On Chesil Beach, Shows Off His Miss Havisham". Bleeding Cool . Retrieved 21 October 2016. Almost no one can write about sex well in my opinion. You've got your erotic writers, fine, if your need for arousal and release comes from text rather than pictures or actual lovers. There are certainly millions of toss-n-tug novels that can certainly get things done. But these books, obviously, aren't literature.

On Chesil Beach - Wikipedia

Yes, Florence's attitude is pathological; worse yet, she hasn't made it entirely clear to Edward how she feels about this act they're supposed to engage in. The biggest difference in the movie, apart from the abuse being much clearer, is the ending. As I point out in my review of the movie, film and literature are different mediums. I think we want to see certain things play out in a movie that we don't necessarily need in a book. So the ending in the film has a certain power. (I cried both times I saw it.) I love the book's ending – it's quiet, subtle and more believable than what we're given in the movie. But even though it doesn't all work the old age-y makeup, especially for Edward, is a bit much, it's still very effective. Florence is “incapable of rudeness”, Edward “polite to a fault” and both are virgins and unable to discuss intimate things (“There were no words to name what had happened, there existed no shared language.”), leading to misunderstandings, lost opportunities and unexpected consequences. a b Thomas, Lou (18 May 2018). "Adapting Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach: 'My advice would be don't worry about having sex tonight' ". British Film Institute . Retrieved 23 May 2018.The fact that Edward “fell away from history to live snugly in the present” seems entirely appropriate. It's not nostalgic, but he is trying to capture an era and he's very explicit about it, constantly reminding the reader of this different time (down to noting that: "This was not a good moment in the history of English cuisine" when discussing their meal). Florence's parents are an academic (her mother) and a successful businessman; complicating the picture is the fact that Edward is hired by her father, his first real job.

Ian McEwan’s Art of Unease | The New Yorker Ian McEwan’s Art of Unease | The New Yorker

The Washington Post and Pulitzer Prize-winning book critic Jonathan Yardley placed On Chesil Beach on his top ten for 2007, praising McEwan's writing and saying that "even when he's in a minor mode, as he is here, he is nothing short of amazing". [2] Plot summary [ edit ] As McEwan demonstrated in the more ambitious but no less affecting Atonement, lives can change in an instant: over a lie, something misunderstood or perhaps even words simply unsaid.

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.