I picked up On Chesil Beach as I was rushing out of a bookstore, knowing nothing about it except that its author is Ian McEwan and that it is short. Later I noticed that the publisher chose to describe the book and attract the reader using three words from a review by the Independent on Sunday: ‘Wonderful … Exquisite … Devastating’. In spite of such an overblown, sickly romantic description, I read the book. And, I think, I was rewarded for it.
On Chesil Beach is the story of the wedding night of a young, naïve couple in the summer of 1962. Edward Mayhew, raised in squalor in a tiny village east of Oxford, and Florence Ponting, the polished product of a privileged childhood in North Oxford, were spending their first night together as husband and wife. The impending consummation of the marriage raised equally visceral, but extremely different, psychological responses in the two of them. He, a bit too anxious, and she, entirely repelled. Their struggle toward a night of sexual compatibility provides the grist of the story.
Although the book is ‘about’ the couple’s wedding night, a great portion of the story is told in flashbacks to Edward’s and Florence’s lives, from childhood to engagement. McEwan masterfully develops his characters in patches and fragments, the way one might stitch a quilt. While events in the bridal suite unfold slowly but inexorably, their power and meaning become clear as McEwan reveals the minds of the protagonists through these flashbacks.The reader senses that everything in Edward and Florence’s shared experience has led them, like it or not, to this moment.\The effect of the structure is as elegant as the prose itself.
There is one important difficulty with the book, which is that the action is centred on the marriage bed. The problem is not McEwan’s treatment of sexuality, which is serious and sensitive, somewhat graphic but by no means pornographic. The problem is that the story cannot be encountered without a significant element of voyeurism – an unfortunate human trait. This creates something of an intellectual paradox: the book engages the mind while instilling the feeling that one is a bit of a peeping tom. Highbrow voyeurism is still voyeurism.
On that account I would recommend On Chesil Beach only selectively.If sexual depictions in print make you uncomfortable, or if you think one ought not to be reading about someone else’s wedding night, even if fictional, you would be better off passing over this offering from McEwan. If your scruples are slightly less exacting or your tolerance higher, On Chesil Beach is a very worthwhile read – evocative, instructive, not quite dark but certainly melancholy.
July 23, 2008 at 8:33 am
McEwan is such a crisp writer. I love his stuff. I think “Saturday” and “Amsterdam” are the way to go, though.
fr: onepennyprofiles.wordpress.com
July 24, 2008 at 8:35 am
You’re right, McEwan does have a knack for saying much in few words. He also has an uncanny sense of the reader’s psychological state at a given moment in the story.
October 2, 2008 at 6:25 am
What a beautiful and astonishing book! I had expected, from your review, something a bit more titillating—the sex was so horrifying it made me wonder how I had managed to enjoy such a revolting activity for the past twenty years.
The fight on the beach is truly the consummation of their marriage. In fact, such fights may be the true consummation of any marriage. One can certainly engage in fairly superficial and shallow sex. But a fight in which you reveal/discover the darkest and ugliest bits of your soul is true intimacy. To be loved by someone who has seen you at your most disgusting is a profound experience. To truly love someone who has covered you with hatred and bile is equally profound.
Those who read this without having “been there” may think me some sort of masochist. I’m not. I am very happily and companionably married—but have been down to Chesil Beach.
What I found so brilliant about this book is how precisely it captures the core of marriage. McEwan captures that thing which makes old married couples cry at weddings, neither joy nor sadness, but knowledge—a tiny glimpse of the road the new couple must travel which no books or films or wise advice can prepare them for.
December 5, 2008 at 9:45 am
Eliot,
I did not mean to indicate that the sex was titillating, although looking back at the review I can see where you got that idea. Sex is rightly private not only or even mainly because it’s titillating, but because it’s an occasion of great vulnerability. That’s in no small part due to its ridiculousness. And Chesil captured that so well, it felt a bit intrusive to witness it, even thought it’s fiction.
I like your conception of the beach argument as the consummation…I like it a lot, for this reason: both attempts at consummation were abortive. That’s what was so tragic about the story and frustrating about the characters. Sexual stuntedness was matched by emotional stuntedness and the result was horrible loss.
For me, part of the measure of a book’s quality is what I think of it after a few months. That would put this book very high indeed.
mendicus
December 5, 2008 at 10:15 am
Yes, I think this is the essence of McEwan’s brilliance. He has so clearly articulated a connection that I would, prior to reading this book, have declared inarticulable.
I too, remember this book and its characters vividly months after reading it. I read lots of books. Frequently, people ask, “Have you read X?” Often, I reply, “Umm, I think so.” Not with this book.
Eliot