When he heard her moan, Edward knew that his happiness was almost complete."
Take this discomforting moment when the goaty Edward "thrusts" his tongue into Florence's mouth: "Now she really did think she was going to be sick. He is a master at producing the wince/laugh response. Some of the comedy of embarrassment is exquisitely, hilariously painful. McEwan, er, milks this awkward situation for all it is worth. Eventually, after a wonderfully painful supper and a few fortifying glasses of wine, everything rushes to an unfortunate and sticky conclusion and Edward and Florence's relationship seems doomed to collapse. Florence, however, whom McEwan hints darkly may have suffered from sexual abuse in the past, is far less eager to make the beast with two backs. Edward is so keen to get his rocks off that he's even refrained from his usual regular masturbation. Presumably taking its cue from the Philip Larkin line that sexual intercourse began in 1963, the book follows the faltering progress of the two virgins, Edward and Florence, on the first night of their honeymoon in July 1962. This opening neatly encapsulates the rest of the novella. "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.
Not least because, onwards from the first two sentences, with their pleasing variations in tense and rhythm, his writing is as elegant as ever: So, it was something of a relief to actually break open the rather attractive cover and see what McEwan has to say for himself. The raging arguments about whether the book is too short to qualify as a novel, whether McEwan was only on the list in some weird attempt to atone for the lack of Booker recognition for (ahem) Atonement, and the question of whether people were really as innocent as McEwan wants to portray them in 1962 all muddied the issue. (A "reviewella" as BillyMills neatly suggested.) If he weren't earning so much lovely money with Atonement and, you know, so fabulously successful and respected, I'd almost feel sorry for the chap.īy the time I got round to reading On Chesil Beach, I'd already absorbed so much opinion about it that it was hard to approach in an objective state of mind. Indeed, I half wonder if the safest thing to do with this review would just be to leave this post now with a big "?" and hand it over so you people below can savage McEwan.
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