On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of On Chesil Beach
Book Review: Jeweler's Eye
Summary: 5 Stars
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.Book Review: Just Say Something!
Summary: 5 Stars
"On Chesil Beach" is pure Ian McEwan and I mean that in a good way. There is so much packed into this short novel with so little of the writing relying on action. McEwan is a master of character study, of coming to terms with the discrepancy between what is in a character's head and what he or she actually does. This is the story of two lovers, Edward and Forence, brought together under censorious circumstances -1960s England. Their wedding night is the point about which the entire story turns, one plagued by embarrassment and misunderstanding that will change their lives forever.
Alright, that sounds a little too much like a movie trailer for a book that is so simple and pure, but that does not make the drama any less true. I opened the front cover with a "let's see how he can possibly follow up Atonement" frame of mind. Perhaps that was not fair, but in some ways this story has some similar elements found in "Atonement," but much more concentrated due to its brevity. McEwan deftly weaves his characters with grace and compassion willing the reader to shout "just say something!" We are moved to frustration and pity in a way that is as wonderful as it is heartbreaking.
Book Review: Love and Patience
Summary: 4 Stars
In just a few short pages McEwan has a lot to say about how men and women communicate, or miscommunicate. He wants you to know it takes more than love and for anybody who has ever let one get away, he makes you ponder what might have been if only you had that something more.Book Review: Manufactured drama and emotion, little substance
Summary: 2 Stars
If the ebb and flow of emotions and elegant prose are your thing, you may like this book. Unfortunately the characters, and the novel, are shallow. Neither are entirely believable (ok, it is fiction, but the characters need to be gotten hold of). In Edward, we have a self centered boor, who spends his premarital days masturbating, "bending daily to the task at hand", preoccupied with the next warm vagina to wrap around himself. We know why Edward is present at the honeymoon; Florence qualifies as his lifetime semen cup. Edward is not the stuff of great literature. Florence deserves better. The author gives some integrity and substance to Florence by way of musical proficiency and civil activism, however Florence is molested into a lifeless shell by her father. While the author is able to manufacture sympathy for this sad woman, he does not maker her believable. She is presented as a substantial independent woman who professes to love this man sooo much, so elegantly and so deeply, and yet she is incapable of basic human communication on her wedding night?? The premise of the book is flawed from the start. The pleasant courtship is an incongruity with the wedding night. The courtship is evidently full of fun and romance (not sex, romance), yet on the wedding night, they cannot even speak to each other? If you are honest with yourself, you have to admit you know of noone who truly loves while behaving this way. This is the stuff of arranged marriages.
The comdey of errors and misunderstandings that take place on the wedding night are not believable. One inevitable error after the other, and the reader feels like a teenager trying to escape from an axe murderer, stumbling and bumbling, oh I forgot to lock the front door, I shot him but hit him in the wrong place, my car wont start, I try to run away but fall down, on and on. Spare me please, I have some Stephen King on the bookshelf if I want it.
The author also directly contradicts his own character development when describing their marriage as a vault away from a disdained youth into mature adulthood, then later (in the same scene!!!, although some pages later) Flo and Eddie express contempt for the maturity of adults in the hotel lobby. Where are the editors?
Crediblity is secondary to emotion evidently.
Book Review: Not Good
Summary: 2 Stars
I have to give this "book-ette" two stars because it is very well written, but the story is truly dreadful and, in the end, uninteresting. This is my first McEwan book, and despite stellar reviews of his other works, I will have a difficult time trying them.