K. Velk's Blog - Posts Tagged "ian-mcewan-on-chesil-beach"

On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


[N.B. I am posting some reviews that I first wrote for my blog back before Goodreads, in 2008. They are slightly edited in their Goodreads form but not much and all were written contemporaneous with my reading (or listening)].

I loved this book - squirm making as it may be. I fled to it after abandoning the over-rated People of the Book [by Geraldine Brooks, which I've also reviewed). This is read by McEwan himself and the contrast between this and Brook's audiobook was immediate and apparent. That contrast it mostly what compelled this post. BEWARE - POTENTIAL SPOILERS AHEAD. HERE'S YOUR STOPPING PLACE IF YOU HAVEN'T READ IT YET.

Over 4 CDs McEwan unfolds the story of the wedding night of a pair of nice 22-year-old English people in 1962. The central fact of their existence at the moment is that they are both virgins. Also, they have grown up in a time and place that completely constrains them from talking about this difficulty. The story goes back and forth from their hotel room, where we get excruciating detail of their attempt at first marital intimacy, to the "backstory: their origins and lives so far. My colleague, after reading this post, pointed out to me that there is a hint that the woman was sexually abused by her father as a child. I had almost missed that but it's true. Since the girl's feelings toward her father seem otherwise equable, and there is next to no discussion of it in her internal monologue, I didn't assume a childhood horror, but it is there as a possiblity.

The interior state of each character is precisely and acutely rendered. McEwan's descriptions of all he touches upon are accurate and economical. He makes an excellent reader as well. The reviewer in the New York Times says McEwan has a "dazzling authority" and I agree. It was this authority that struck me so forcefully when I decamped from The People of the Book and landed On Chesil Beach. "Here I am in the hands of a real master," I thought, before McEwan read through the second paragraph.

As for the story (beware, more partial spoilers ahead) Florence, the bride, is convinced that her low libido means there is something wrong with her; she's a freak of nature and it will soon be revealed to her everlasting horror and shame. The boy, Edward, and at 22 he is a boy, is as pent up as he can be, trying to behave well, trying to read the signals rightly. Painful as it all is, I had to laugh.

I am not sure if McEwan intended that particular laughter. Some of it is meant to be comic,surely; Florence thinks of Edward's "early arrival" as so horrific, worse than if he had burst his jugular vein. Did he not mean us to laugh at that? Much ado about nothing? At the end of my audio version McEwan is interviewed briefly. He tells how he read one part of this agonized sex scene to an audience in Surrey (I believe) in England. The audience sat in complete (probably horrified) silence through it all. When he read the same scene to a Palo Atlo, California audience (where Stanford University is), many women in the audience burst into laughter. He attributed this laughter to his having struck a raw nerve, eliciting a kind of hysteria. I think what he actually got was the predictable response of a roomful of educated women remembering their own anxiety and the high drama regarding their passage out of virginity. Years down the road it is hard not to laugh at the ridiculous girl you were. Or maybe some of the Stanford audience just couldn't believe anyone would ever take such a thing so very seriously. I don't think, in any case, that it was nerves that made the women of Palo Alto laugh.

The book was too short for me. (Another contrast from People of the Book). My one complaint is that the ending, after such a true-seeming story, seemed false to me. I won't give it away completely; suffice it to say that Edward and Florence do not do what nervous young people in real life typically manage in the end. This rang a false note. Also, there is a tacked on post-script that focuses only on Edward, after having given equal time to both characters previously. I was sorry about that. In some ways this postscript is what gives the story a point; a sort of "road not taken" final analysis. But this seems banal coming from a talent like McEwan. Still, I admired it immensely and was glad to have stumbled on it.



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