On Chesil Beach, by Ian McEwan
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I just finished this novella by the author of Atonement, and I was quite impressed. I was prepared not to like it because his last novel, Saturday, although classic McEwan in most ways, was so distasteful to me. But On Chesil Beach was a well-crafted novel, almost more like a short story. It focused on a single night in a young couple's life in the early 1960s . . . just at that historical moment when 50s sensibilities were breathing their last but still in place, and sex was a taboo subject even between engaged couples. A short epilogue breezes through the next few decades as they and culture change.
What most amazes me about McEwan is how he writes about human consciousness in such incredible detail and accuracy. He's almost like Virginia Woolf, capturing the stream of consciousness; but his moments are more recondite and more intense. As he does a play-by-play of the wedding night of two nervous virgins, you have to believe that he's experienced this himself, else how could he be so precise and so convincing? But he did the same thing with the character of Briony in Atonement, and I'm pretty sure he's never been a 7-year-old girl in Edwardian England.
As they say on gofugyourself.com, well-played, Ian McEwan, well-played.
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I just finished this novella by the author of Atonement, and I was quite impressed. I was prepared not to like it because his last novel, Saturday, although classic McEwan in most ways, was so distasteful to me. But On Chesil Beach was a well-crafted novel, almost more like a short story. It focused on a single night in a young couple's life in the early 1960s . . . just at that historical moment when 50s sensibilities were breathing their last but still in place, and sex was a taboo subject even between engaged couples. A short epilogue breezes through the next few decades as they and culture change.
What most amazes me about McEwan is how he writes about human consciousness in such incredible detail and accuracy. He's almost like Virginia Woolf, capturing the stream of consciousness; but his moments are more recondite and more intense. As he does a play-by-play of the wedding night of two nervous virgins, you have to believe that he's experienced this himself, else how could he be so precise and so convincing? But he did the same thing with the character of Briony in Atonement, and I'm pretty sure he's never been a 7-year-old girl in Edwardian England.
As they say on gofugyourself.com, well-played, Ian McEwan, well-played.
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