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On Chesil Beach Reviews

Customer Rating:
Summary: Romantic Chance Lost
Comment: Ian McEwan writes a love story in "On Chesil Beach." Taking his time to bring us firmly into the wedding night anticipated by both Florence and Edward (Florence with fearful disgust of what is in store, and Edward in ecstatic longing), McEwan also carries us back into their courtship and into their own histories, so that by the time the wedding bed is reached, we are hoping so much for the young couple that it will not be the disaster it portends to be.

It is McEwan's ease with us, his taking the time to unfold slowly and easily, yet never dully or unnecessarily, the peculiar and unique circumstances of the two young people, that makes us complicit partners in the outcome. Florence and Edward are as well known to us as they are to themselves, and certainly better known to us than to each other. What is left unsaid between them -- what they do not know about each other -- is in the end the reason for great pain. Because we know so much, we feel anguish; we feel real discomfort that we cannot reach across the pages and shake them each, just a little.

Florence and Edward are not stock characters, one a musician of a privileged family, the other a historian from a thwarted family. They are much more than their circumstances: they are unique responses to the facts of their background, and education, their choice in love and marriage, and their placement in time, just before a freeing up of sexual expression and frank talk. But this is not a book about sex and one's appetite ( or not) for it. It is a book about why these two people, in love and married, cannot talk about, or do, the things that will bring them together. There is always a chasm of (mis)understanding between two people, always things we do not know or fully understand about the people we love so much. It is the act of going across that chasm, with a gesture or a word, that creates a connection. The understanding and the knowledge will never be complete, but our efforts at connection can make up for our failures.

McEwan is deeply romantic and I would argue that his deep romanticism is his only flaw, in that it leads him to write situations that do not resonate as truth. After the whole book leads us willingly along because of its deep truthfulness -- we know and believe these characters completely -- we find ourselves suddenly jarred and shocked by the one act of omission that throws entire lives out of whack. It just seems a bit much. McEwan states: "This is how the entire course of a life can be changed -- by doing nothing." Yes, that's true; but in reality, between people in love (and not just romantic love), there is never just the one failure: most of us will try again and again to connect with one we love. We will let our loved one back in, perhaps too many times, to try again for a state of grace and understanding. And as a realist, even a romantic realist, I argue that we have many chances to make good on our failures; not as many as we would wish for and maybe not as many as we need, but certainly we have more than just one try to get it right. But maybe I am the deep romantic here, and McEwan the harsh realist.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Bittersweet tale, ultimately trite
Comment: Ian McEwan set himself the writerly task of composing a novel whose entire action takes place in just a few hours and succeeded. However, along the way he failed to help the reader much care about the young couple whose lives turn on a dime on their honeymoon night. The characters are so two-dimensional that their cataclysm fails the believability test. No one THAT much in love could behave THAT stupidly.

McEwan is handy with a phrase, however vacuous the result. If you are fond of TV drama, this may just be your ticket, but life is short and there are more good books to read than you will ever have time to open.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: On Boring Beach
Comment: The premise of the book is nice....a young couple and the struggle to consumate their marriage on their wedding night. Only it falls very short.
It's boring, and lacks a lot of character build. It seems like the wedding is only about the consumation, and not because these two people want to be together. Well, it sorta is....there is not enough here to fill up a book, and it's a half hearted attempt. Ian McEwan can, and has done better. This book was a quick read, but was boring, and was not remarkable in any way. There was nothing special about this book or the story. The only thing that makes it readable is that Ian McEwan is atleast a good writer, his style is good, so it was not completely awful to read. I feel like he spit this one out though, as I kept waiting for something to happen and it never did.
I've read worse,but I've read a lot better too.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Jeweler's Eye
Comment: With meticulous precision, Ian McEwan examines the wedding night of an innocent couple, who marry in 1962 and spend their first night alone together at a hotel on Chesil Beach. In always elegant prose, McEwan displays his great gift for describing the particular and making it universal. In this case, he turns his jeweler's eye on the misunderstandings between a young man and young woman, deeply in love and deeply inhibited. Recommended for anyone who has ever loved or hoped to love.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Anticlimactic
Comment:
This book would have made a good short story. The plot was too weak
and too drawn out for a full length novel. I was disappointed in this
book.

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