On Chesil Beach: Ian McEwan

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As it turns out, McEwan’s concern for his characters’ individual humanity and his interest in the larger historical movement end up being somewhat at odds; they refuse, in the end, to embody sociological analysis. Liberation, in this novel, happens somewhere else. But that can only be to the benefit of the humanity of this small but interesting novel. I like it much more than McEwan’s last six novels, at least. (…) The novel is saved by an honest familiarity with individual psychology, and by the fact that it is, really, all about sex, which McEwan certainly does understand. The larger movements of history, however, enter into these lives in ways which are all too much like the novel that Professor Peter Hennessy might write about the period." - Philip Hensher, The Spectator

On Chesil Beach’: Did You Catch Florence’s Backstory? ‘On Chesil Beach’: Did You Catch Florence’s Backstory?

The honeymoon is to take place beside Chesil Beach, in a Georgian hotel. They eat their nuptial supper - melon with glace cherries, slabs of beef with overcooked veg, in their room overlooking the bay - while a pair of waiters, local lads, stands by intrusively. The beach, that unique spit of shingle which runs between the Fleet Lagoon and the Channel, immediately seems emblematic of several things: of this moment of certainty in lives that might never again seem certain; of the path that they have just embarked on together, a path which, like all married couples in love they believe they will be making new; but also of a romance that has taken place between the devil of Middle English rectitude and the deep blue sea of the coming sexual revolution. I've been in a relationship with Ian McEwan for less than a month now, and, let me tell you. . . he's driving me CRAZY! Finally, the time arrives to consummate the marriage. However, it is rather short-lived as Florence accidentally overstimulates Edward, causing him to ejaculate all over her body before they even have sex. This disgusts Florence on many levels, and she storms out. Edward goes after Florence to discuss what has happened and they have a heated argument. By the end of it, Florence has made it clear that she has no interest in ever having sex. Mary Ward, The Literature of Love (Cambridge University Press, 2009; ISBN 0521729815), p. 61: "the author hints earlier in the novel that Florence may have been abused by her father. McEwan had stated in a pre-2008 Booker prize interview: 'In the final draft it's there as a shadowy fact for readers to make of it what they will. I didn't want to be too deterministic about this. Many readers may miss it altogether, which is fine.'"I saw the movie last night. With one exception, though, I will have to put my comments as a spoiler, for those who haven't already read the book. The photography was excellent, especially in evoking the loneliness of that pebble beach. The sense of period was uncanny, not just in visual details but also practical ones. It’s in the book too, but seeing the unspeakable awfulness of that honeymoon dinner—melon slice with glacé cherry, and overcooked roast beef with mixed veg—slammed me with repellent recognition. The leads, Billy Hawle and Saoirse Ronan, were both good, if just a smidgen too old. But also—and this is what matters—too present. The scene in the hotel bedroom soon became excruciating to watch as the camera returned to it again and again. Not that it was inappropriate or in any way pornographic. But the reader manages his own balance between the psychological damage to these two young people and the clumsy physical act in which it is played out. The cinemagoer has to accept the director's balance, and loses a dimension as a result. Florence’s family is upper middle class. Her father is a successful businessman and her mother teaches philosophy at Oxford. Edward’s father is a beleaguered elementary school principal, who must manage the household because a freak accident has left his wife brain-damaged.

On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan – review | Books | The Guardian

Ian McEwan's story exists exactly in that hinterland in British courtship between repression and licence, the Lawrence litigation and 'Love Me Do'. It is July of 1962 and Edward Mayhew and Florence Ponting, he an ardent graduate historian, she the tremulous lead violinist in a string quartet with aspirations to Wigmore Hall, both 22, have just got married in Oxford. Their love story and their tragedy grows out of McEwan's opening sentence, which contains within its careful confines almost everything you need to know about what follows: 'They were young, educated, and both virgins on this, their wedding night, and they lived in a time when conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible.' Principal photography began on 17 October 2016, on Chesil Beach, Dorset, England. Other filming locations included London, Oxford and Pinewood Studios in England. The dramatic views of Chesil Beach are perfect, avoiding the cliché of extreme weather, but having a vaguely brooding heaviness. You hear the crunch of the pebbles, underfoot, and as waves wash up and percolate down. The lagoon behind is still and silent. Florence and Edward are the only people in sight.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”. 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. Ian McEwan's prose is beautiful as ever in this novella. He belongs to those writers you only have to read a few sentences from and immediately know they have been written by him. There is something powerful behind the words he chooses, something that makes you care for the characters even if it is sometimes difficult to understand their motivations. This simple story is able to say so much about human nature: how it is mandatory to talk to each other honestly about one's fears and feelings, because remaining silent could almost never lead into a happy future. How does he make your stomach ache with anticipation and suspense without murder or violence or action. . . merely the psychological tension that exists between two humans?

Ian McEwan’s Art of Unease | The New Yorker Ian McEwan’s Art of Unease | The New Yorker

Jaremko-Greenwold, Anya (31 May 2018). " "On Chesil Beach" and What Is Expected of Women". FLOOD Magazine. Anthemic Agency . Retrieved 4 June 2018. McEwan doesn't come right out and say it, but there are strong hints that a childhood trauma involving her father is at the root of it. From the Suez Crisis to the Cuban Missile Crisis, the fall of the Berlin Wall to the current pandemic and climate change, Roland sometimes rides with the tide of history, but more often struggles against it. Haunted by lost opportunities, he seeks solace through every possible means - music, literature, friends, sex, politics and, finally, love cut tragically short, then love ultimately redeemed. His journey raises important questions for us all. Can we take full charge of the course of our lives without damage to others? How do global events beyond our control shape our lives and our memories? And what can we really learn from the traumas of the past?This is my first McEwan novel; it's almost a 5 but not quite. I must say, if this short novel is any indication, McEwan is a master of tightening the circles, bit by bit, to mounting tension and then to the Moment, the place and time when opposing forces collide, when choices must be made, and courses must be altered or not. McEwan describes that wedding night in painful, exacting detail, from the meal they have in their room all the way through to the bitter end on the beach. McEwan offsets the hopeless inability of the characters to communicate with each other with the splendid flow of his writing. For if the words that ought to have been said in the story falter, and those that should have been buried in silence explode, the reader is left with McEwan’s language. This novel is set with crafted, contrasting, balanced, nuanced, full-bodied, sweet and sharp words that evoke the completeness of chamber music. For music is always in McEwan’s writing. But after On Chesil Beach climaxes, the masterfully modulated denouement fast-forwards through the decades to come to our present day -- and prods us to consider what this book really is." - Ed Park, Salon

On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan | Waterstones On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan | Waterstones

At times, Florence feels more like the parent or child of Edward, rather than his girlfriend or wife. A major theme is destiny, which is perhaps the converse of missed opportunities. “They regarded themselves as too sophisticated to believe in destiny”, yet it was a belief in destiny that prompted Florence to form her quartet, and Florence and Edward inferred the hand of destiny in the extreme improbability of their meeting, plus Edward wants to study and write about how powerful individuals can change destiny. It was the last time they saw each other: Edward was free to satisfy his sexual desires, and he was even married, but it didn’t last long and Florence realized her dream and became a successful musician. Edward reminisces their last evening together and wonders what would happen if they didn’t separate then, but it was too late to change anything and the only thing that left for him is to remember the image of “the girl with violin” on the beach walking away from his sight and out of his life forever. Update this section!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. It is 1962. Edward and Florence have gone to a lovely seaside hotel on their wedding night, totally unprepared for the actual mechanics of sex. Both are virgins. Both have little knowledge of what can or should be done and the result is not a happy one. Still, the issue here is not about the mores of the 50’s, I believe. Is it really possible for two 20-somethings to be so ignorant, even in 1962? I suppose it is possible. But this is a novel about communication and trust more than about the uptight mores of a bygone time.