ON CHESIL BEACH

Not great. Well-written but hasn't grabbed me at all.

Not bad, but it won't win any prizes. Oh, it did.

FANS of Ian McEwan still reeling from director Joe Wright’s botched film adaptation of Atonement (and, indeed, the disappointment of the author’s recent Saturday) will find much to rally their spirits here. In little more than 160 pages, this brilliantly compressed novella takes its primary focus – the 1962 wedding night of two educated sexual innocents – and conjures...more

FANS of Ian McEwan still reeling from director Joe Wright’s botched film adaptation of Atonement (and, indeed, the disappointment of the author’s recent Saturday) will find much to rally their spirits here. In little more than 160 pages, this brilliantly compressed novella takes its primary focus – the 1962 wedding night of two educated sexual innocents – and conjures entire worlds of fear, repression and missed opportunity. For Edward and Florence, this is the pivotal moment of both their lives. McEwan meticulously portrays their characters, shows us their first meeting from both sides and describes their differing anxieties about their new marriage before, in a brilliant closing flourish, sketching in the aftermath, the subsequent decades, with an elegance that shades into tragedy. Don’t put off by the book’s brevity – this is superbly written, McEwan’s best book for ages.   hide