Ouch! ( )

1962, two virgins on their wedding night in a hotel on the coast of England. Flashes back and forth between their disastrous first night, and their respective childhoods and history together. Be prepared for a depressing ending. Compelling; I, er, finished quickly. ( )

Well written but depressing. I really don't like depressing books. A nice reminder about how important it is to communicate honestly with your partner. ( )

A surprisingly effective narrative structure -- the story of two characters as played out and recalled on their wedding night in 1962. ( )

I’d not read a McEwan for ages and ages, but used to be a big fan. These notes may be a little harsh, and, if so, that’s probably due, as it is so often, to disappointed expectations.

On Chesil Beach reads a bit like “Essence of McEwan”. As if he's just dispatched with plot and is just relying on his forensic dissection of human interactions — the disparity between what people say, what they mean to say, and how what they say is heard. The plot, mostly just the mundanities that happened to align to make the moment of crisis quite so critical, is as barebones as is possible to give some foundation for the misunderstandings, the things unsaid, and the things badly said. I preferred it when McEwan's toolbag was utilised in service of a plot, not the other way round.

It may be that such a pared down approach could have worked, but the situation seemed pretty contrived (sure, such things must have happened, but vastly more people going through them managed to work it out one way or another). The temporal setting, on the edge of a new age of sexual openness in the early 60s, is certainly fascinating and fertile ground for examining human relationships, but I don’t feel that McEwan has managed to produce anything of any particular relevance here.
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