On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan

A novel of remarkable depth and poignancy from one of the most acclaimed writers of our time.It is July 1962. Florence is a talented musician who dreams of a career on the concert stage and of the perfect life she will create with Edward, an earnest young history student at University College of London, who unexpectedly wooed and won her heart. Newly married that morning, both virgins, Edward and Florence arrive at a hotel on the Dorset coast. At dinner in their rooms they struggle to suppress their worries about the wedding night to come. Edward, eager for rapture, frets over Florence's response to his advances and nurses a private fear of failure, while Florence's anxieties run deeper: she is overcome by sheer disgust at the idea of physical contact, but dreads disappointing her husband when they finally lie down together in the honeymoon suite.Ian McEwan has caught with understanding and compassion the innocence of Edward and Florence at a time when marriage was presumed to be the outward sign of maturity and independence. On Chesil Beach is another masterwork from McEwan--a story of lives transformed by a gesture not made or a word not spoken.

sadly not as good as the mcewan that i've read. i devoured the other books in a constant state of enjoyment, and i felt like i was just sort of making it through this one.

This was still the era –it would end later in that famous decade- 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. Almost strangers, they stood, strangely together, on a new pinnacle of existence, gleeful that their new status promised to promote them out of their endless youth – Edward an Florence, free at last!

Nunca hubiera creído que un libro sobre la noche de bodas de una pareja inglesa de los 60s me iba a gustar tanto. Excelente McEwan retratando una época a través de una narración cuidada que pasaea al lector por la noche de bodas de Florence y Edward y sus pasados familiares, sus fantasmas y la historia de su relación, todo ello tamizado por el clima de época.

El hecho de que el narrador sea contemporáneo y nos cuente lo sucedido bajo una óptica retrospectiva le da un buen toque adicional. Quizás sólo peque el autor en explicar demasiado, pero es sólo una observación quisquillosa.

La historia está atravesada por el silencio y el “de eso no se habla” que reinaba sobre ciertos temas por aquella época, sobre todo lo relacionado con la sexualidad, pero también cuestiones familiares y sociales. Si tan sólo los pobres Edward y Florence se hubieran casado una década después...

And what stood in their way? Their personalities and pasts, their ignorance and fear, timidity, squeamishness, lack of entitlement or experience or easy manners, then the tail end of a religious prohibition, their Englishness and class, and history itself. Nothing much at all.

Communication and the lack of it is, for me, the central theme of On Chesil Beach. The idea that Edward and Florence struggle to express their feelings to each other, afraid of the expectations ahead of their marriage, highlights the dangers of repressed emotions and poor communication, of how events and actions misinterpreted can have devastating consequences.

The prose is lyrically vivid, recounting Edward and Florence's miserable wedding night experience on a summer night in 1962. Florence's possible asexuality is a distinct contrast to Edward's desire to have an immediate sexual relationship. It is ultimately challenging to read since we know from the offset their relationship probably won't work.

Where I think On the Chesil Beach falters a little is the last section. The reader gets a good sense of Edward's later ruminations on the relationship, where he felt it went wrong and his own life. There is nothing from Florence's perspective contributing to my personal feeling that the ending felt rushed. McEwan could have expanded on parts of the story. Was Florence possibly asexual, or was there a hint of sexual abuse from her Dad? It was a bit disappointing this was never properly clarified.

A good read but not a great one.