This was a nice, short novel about two people consummating their marriage. They are both young and unexperienced and the book follows their short love story up and past the point of marriage.

I enjoyed the book. It was simple and short with an entertaining storyline behind it.

I listened to this book on audio cd and loved the interview with the author. It really explained the story well.

Yawn - interminable.
I read this book, which is more of a novella, in one day. It still seemed too long for the subject material. Surely this should have been a short story?

The end of this book made it a 5 star read. It was a story set in the 1960's, a time when young people meeting, and marrying in the way the main characters did, would be uncommon now. The reader senses Edward and Florence are not not well suited to be married. She is a classical musician, and he loves rock, and history. She comes from a well off family in Oxford, and he is from a family that lives in a small hamlet several miles from Oxford. His father is a school master, and his mother is disabled. Yet they meet, and become a couple. It is on their honeymoon and on Chesil Beach, that they confront these differences.

McEwan has created a novel of regret. Reading other friends' reviews on GR, they had similar reactions to the end of this novel. I loved the way that McEwan reveals the lives that Edward and Florence go on to live. He is a master at revealing characters' depths while maintaining an economy of words. Readers may reflect on their own lives as they finish this novel. How many times have our lives been changed by encounters that might not have happened? Paths that cross or don't. Lives that intertwine or don't.