I was expecting quality prose from McEwan, but I didn't count on being so strongly moved by the fate of these two young people in Love.
A simple story of the wedding night for a boy and girl in 1962. They are young, innocent, clearly infatuated with each other, and both virgins. What could possibly go wrong?
I would have been tempted to laugh at their tentative attempts to bring down the walls society and tradition has raised between them if not for a premonition of doom hanging over their fragile souls. I am reminded once again that it is not our enemies who break our hearts, but the people we love the most, and most of the time out of the best intentions. And also of a quote from a Romanian author (D. R. Popescu I think) who said something like this : "There is too short a time between the moment when we are too young and the moment when we are too old." For these two people this interval could be measured in seconds.
Recommended to anyone who claims a man cannot write strong romance novels.

3,8*
Ian MacEwan voltou a deixar-me "abananada". A sua perícia para descrever os medos e contradições do ser humano, sobretudo os mais obscuros e inconfessáveis, é singular.

Life is just like this story: A thread of misunderstandings, secrets, broken dreams and false expectations.

Life is also much like McEwan's writing itself: Precise, wise, masterful and merciless.

Here, On Chesil Beach I found the whole human experience condensed into 166 pages.

Mr McEwan, after this novel, Sir, I believe you have nothing else left to prove to the literary world.

Nothing can be as powerful as the right word spoken at the right time.

In life, we're all On Chesil Beach

“… they had so many plans, giddy plans, heaped up before them in the misty future, as richly tangled as the summer flora of the Dorset coast, and as beautiful.”

I brought two novels along with me on a recent holiday - this and another by one of my favorite writers, Wendell Berry. I forgot to pack the tissues. That was a careless oversight I won’t repeat again. On Chesil Beach served as a reminder to not let years pass between reaching for books written by some of the most brilliant authors around. Why do I do this?!

Reading this novel while observing the inexperienced love of two of my companions on this trip made it doubly moving, sweet and relevant. It also made it difficult and disconcerting when the two I furtively observed were my teenage daughter and her boyfriend. I filed away a lot of notes for future talks with my daughter about the importance of open communication in her relationships. It also further emphasized that our own discussions as mother and daughter are just as essential as I have believed them to be.

“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 and Florence, free at last!”

Fortunately, we don’t live in a time when marriage is the ultimate goal in a young person’s life. There are still pressures and societal expectations that need to be tempered or even stamped out, but we have made advancements in our thinking. Edward and Florence, however, did not have the advantage of more enlightened norms concerning the institution of marriage. Naturally, both then and now, we bring into our relationships the good, the bad, and the ugly. The key is to understanding these things first in ourselves, and then to share them openly with our partners, friends, etc. For some baffling reason, this is often much easier said than done.

We first meet the beautiful, promising young couple the evening of their wedding. Through an omniscient narrator, we are also privy to flashbacks into their childhoods. A messy, complicated tangle of emotions and backgrounds is exposed. The disastrous tone of the beginning of the novel becomes more and more evident. What at first may have appeared to be simple wedding night jitters turns into a can of worms!

“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.”

What I love about McEwan is not just his penetrating analysis (sorry, couldn’t resist!), but also his ability to insert some humor into his story on occasion. On Chesil Beach is also heartbreaking, honest and perfectly told. Unshared fears, secrets, and wrong impressions can corrupt what on the surface seems simple and true. The old cliché that all you need is love is blown right out of the water. A shared life needs a much sturdier foundation.

I adored this short but insightful, powerfully written book. I vow to read McEwan again within the next few months. He’s an expert at his craft and a gifted observer of human nature.

“On Chesil Beach he could have called out to Florence…”

Sono un poco delusa. La scrittura è eccellente, non c'è che dire. I dialoghi, i pensieri e i gesti dei protagonisti sono davvero ben studiati e ben descritti, e donano un tocco di teatralità molto piacevole alla lettura.
L'atmosfera in generale ha lo stesso senso di ineluttabilità, seppur nell'ordinarietà di una vita comune - come in Donna per caso di Coe.

Ma il racconto della notte di nozze di Edward e Florence mi è risultato a tratti prolisso, pur nella sua brevità; i flashback riguardanti le rispettive infanzie, le famiglie e la storia del loro incontro, mi sono sembrati più dei riempitivi che non elementi di un vero e proprio intreccio. Recupera qualche punto con un po' di accelerazione nel finale.

Una luna di miele che in realtà del miele non ha proprio niente: è una resa dei conti, è un venire al pettine di tutti quei nodi accumulatisi nel rapporto tra due giovani che, condizionati dalla società e dall'ambiente esteriore, non hanno mai neppure concepito di potersi comportare con naturalezza, nemmeno tra loro due nelle fasi del loro corteggiamento e dell'imminente matrimonio. Questo elemento così fortemente condizionante è la società perbenista inglese degli anni sessanta che, stando all'autore, pare essere un favoloso mix di tabù non solo in materia di sesso ma anche di tutte le altre sfere della persona. L'effetto "anni '60" in questo racconto arriva a sembrare un elemento concreto, misurabile come la pioggia o come una temperatura, e non come un qualcosa di puramente indicativo. In aggiunta a questo background, i blocchi psicologici dei protagonisti fanno sì che questa notte di nozze sia come un domino al contrario: non riuscendo a sbloccare un nodo, restano bloccati anche tutti gli altri.

Si mette a nudo, in maniera forse anche un po' spietata, una situazione che nei decenni passati può essere stata reale per tante persone, per alcuni dei nostri nonni o genitori, e che certamente qualche volta si ripete ancora oggi: non basta dire 'matrimonio' perché tutto sia rose e fiori. Mi viene da fare il paragone con il Gaarder che ho letto da poco, in cui il racconto dell'incontro tra i due protagonisti era molto più fiabesco, e dove il libro si conclude con l'esortazione, verso il lettore, a farsi raccontare la storia dei propri genitori: certo che sentirsi raccontare una storia come quella di Edward e Flo potrebbe esser piuttosto imbarazzante. Di sicuro questo McEwan risulterà molto più realistico e molto meno zuccheroso di quel Gaarder, e altrettanto sicuramente porterà il lettore a farsi qualche domanda riguardo il come sarebbero andate le cose se fosse rimasto con il primo fidanzato/a e a riflettere su tutti quei dettagli, quelle scelte che si compiono in pochi istanti ma che viste a distanza di tempo finiscono per rappresentare importanti bivi nella propria vita.

It took me three years to finish it. I bought it on Heathrow, eyes full of tears because I was departing from my boyfriend in Dublin via London. It was the n-th time I did this, fiercely sobbing while sitting on my luggage and hating every step of the known airport. It always took me a while to get a hold of myself, because London has always been no-man's land. Up to now, London has taken place as the place where my bipolar relationship reached its highs and lows. My head spinning in all directions, looking at my passport and my fucking mobile phone switched off, because I couldn’t stand another aching I love you, getting me back in that comfort zone. Confusing life-calling-reality obligations with my long-distance-relationship angst. It was really a long exhausting process.

And luckily, then I still wasn’t prepared for this book. I would have found myself in novella’s last 20 pages and I would have murdered this stunningly doomed book.

It’s about our tempered decisions and how they influence us. McEwan’s words have had a huge impact on me and he doesn’t waste them. Tragedies are not always loud. Impatience of the youth often creates an avalanche. And then memories, shame, regret and longing are your new adult companions.

I've been waffling on what I think about this book. It is the story of a wedding night, awkward sex, unfilled expectations, misunderstandings that aren't worked out. Unfortunately I could never read it through the characters' eyes, I was always too aware of the author somehow, his gaze on these people, a sneaking feeling that his emphasis was on the wrong things.

And then there is a hint of something in Florence's past that is unresolved, even for the reader. I had looked forward to this one a while and was left unsatisfied.

Back in about 1988 a friend lent me a novel she had just finished reading. "You must read this", she said, "it's amazing". The book was The Child in Time and I had heard of neither the book nor its author before. My friend was right about the book being amazing. I still remember being very impressed by the writing. However, I was devastated by the premise of the novel: the effect on a father of the abduction of his three year old child - so devastated that I decided not to read any more of McEwan's work for fear of being devastated all over again.

Fast forward twenty years and a different friend gives me a pile of books as a gift. One of them is On Chesil Beach. I dutifully thank him, knowing all the while that I'll never read it, because it's written by Ian McEwan. The book stays on my bookshelf, though, because it's a gift and disposing of books given as gifts just seems wrong, even if I don't want to read them.

So now it's 2012 and the book has been sitting on the shelf for four years, along with a number of other books I've been given or bought and haven't read. I decide to participate in a challenge to read books owned but not read before the beginning of the year. I pick up On Chesil Beach. It's time to get over The Child in Time.

This novel tells a deceptively simple tale. It's 1962. Edward and Florence, an intelligent, well-educated young couple, have just married. They are spending the first night of their honeymoon in a hotel on the Dorset coast, overlooking Chesil Beach. Both virgins, they have quite different feelings as they move towards having sex for the first time. What happens on that night is interwoven with flashbacks of their lives and of what has led them to this point. What happens changes their lives forever.

I did not find either Edward or Florence to be particularly sympathetic characters. While what happens is both horrifying and funny, I didn't feel fully engaged with either of them as people. However, what I found utterly compelling about the novel is its illustration of how the seemingly small decisions people make and the words spoken or left unsaid can irrevocably change lives. I love McEwan's prose: elegant, clear, economical. I love his re-creation of England and Englishness at the beginning of a decade which was to transform the world. I also love that he managed to say and to imply so much in so few words.

I can confidently say that this novel has cured my McEwan phobia. I can finally get around to reading more of his work.

I hadn't intended on reading any Ian McEwan in the near future, and this wasn't even atop my McEwan "to-read" list. However, as it is short-listed for the Booker, and since I have a tendency to hardly ever keep up with contemporary literature, I was inspired to pick this up at the library yesterday. Then, I proceeded to read it in one sitting.

Of course, this rapid reading was very much aided by the length of the book, but this is ultimately an inconsequential reason for my fixation. As with *Atonement*, the only other of his I've read, McEwan here displays the most amazing ability to create such honest and well-developed characters, that it is, for me, seemingly impossible not to attach yourself at least somewhat to the “their stories”.

While I think that *Atonement* is a more developed work—complex and historical, at once youthfully passionate and bitterly resigned—and, thus literarily, impressed me more, *On Chesil Beach* is, for me, much more affecting. This was due, in part, because I was more willing and able to become wholly enmeshed in the text. It also seemed more relevant to my present life, which, though I often shrink from reviews that make such a point, I must admit allowed me to become more invested, more enveloped in McEwan's tale.

Though I claim that *Atonement* is more developed, we should remind ourselves that *On Chesil Beach* is a notably shorter work. I'm astounded at McEwan's ability, in such few words, to create complex characters and themes that are not in the least bit inchoate. The only author I know of who can take on such a multitude of themes in such a concise text is J.M. Coetzee, though he is an utterly different writer than McEwan. Whereas Coetzee is focused more on what we might call the social and the universal, McEwan explores the psychological and the individual. And, yet, through the seemingly specific individuals that McEwan creates, we wholly relate, thus imbuing his themes, emotions, ideas with a kind of universality.

This work explores, so beautifully, much of what it means to be young, in love, and attempting to assume adulthood and take the first, daunting steps in an attempt to forge a fulfilling life. And, as I read, my heart simply broke.

È strano questo libro: statico, ma soprattutto pensato. Pensano troppo i due protagonisti. Pensano ma non parlano, o parlano del tempo. Ma non parlano del tempo che passa tra loro, dei loro sogni e del loro amore, dei loro desideri e delle loro paure; e così il tempo passa, li segna e li attraversa. E li divide, lasciando nel lettore l'amaro in bocca e un senso d'impotenza, e la certezza che forse sarebbe bastato solo un gesto per non perdere tutto.

L'aver visto il film, oggi pomeriggio, mi ha fatto desiderare di rileggerlo. Ma non è tempo di riletture, questo.

Rating: 3 stars

Plot: 2.5
Characters: 3
Writing style: 3

"On Chesil Beach" by Ian McEwan is a story set in 1962. Two young and inexperienced newlyweds arrive at a seaside hotel to spend their wedding night.
I enjoyed certain aspects of it, (e. g. subtlety of revealing information to the reader, the atmosphere of the period), but overall it's quite mediocre. It could've been a short story instead of novella, some parts felt contrived and the ending was unnecessary.

[LTU]
Įvertinimas: 3 žvaigždutės

Siužetas: 2.5
Veikėjai: 3
Rašymo stilius: 3

Ian McEwan "Česilo pakrantėje" - tai istorija apie jauną ir nepatyrusią, ką tik susituokusią porą. 1962 metais jie atvyksta į pajūrio viešbutį, praleisti pirmosios nakties.
Patiko kai kurie istorijos aspektai (kaip subtiliai skaitytojui atskleidžiamos detalės, puikiai perteikta laikotarpio atmosfera), bet apskritai kūrinys vidutiniškas. Būtų užtekę trumpo apsakymo - daug vietų pasirodė dirbtinės, parašytos, kad būtų daugiau puslapių, o pabaiga apskritai nereikalinga.

My cobbled together words can't begin to do justice to Ian McEwan's superb writing. Not a wasted word in 160 odd pages. A classic. I wish I'd read it sooner

Edward and Florence love each other, of that I am certain. It is 1962, well before the 60s have really got going - reading this, it seems a century ago. The couple married that year and are spending their honeymoon overlooking the Chesil Beach. (Oddly enough I did too, but later, much later).

The planets seem right for E&F. They seem a perfect match. But they are children on the wrong side of the swinging 60s who need to find themselves and each other, aside from the “forcing house of sex” (E.M. Forster).

I can't say more without spoiling. Fortunately Ian McEwan can. Edward and Florence: please read and everybody else too. Exquisite.