On Chesil Beach

Book Review

Ian McEwan

On Chesil Beach is Ian McEwan's eleventh novel. Anyone who follows modern British and Commonwealth literature must surely be familiar with his work. He his considered a virtuoso among his peers, and there is no doubt that it is just a matter of time before he is awarded the Nobel Prize for his body of work. He has won the Booker Prize for his novel Amsterdam , and has been shortlisted for The Comfort of Strangers, Black Dogs, and Atonement, and has been longlisted for Saturday. A reader approaches his works expecting a certain level of quality. The question at hand regarding On Chesil Beach, in the TurboBookSnob's mind is not whether this is a superior piece of work – this is to be expected – but whether not it is a superior enough piece of work to stand side by side with the other books longlisted for the 2007 Booker Prize, or of the caliber to make the shortlist. At a brief 165 pages of large typeset, does it have the depth and complexity to merit the accolades of the best novel of the year, or is it more of a novella, the kind of brief but well-done exercise that an author might submit to satisfy his contractual obligations to deliver a new book?

The novel is set in the summer of 1962, and in chronological time, spans just one evening in the lives of Edward and Florence. They have just been married, and are at a hotel on Chesil Beach on the Dorset coast, where they will spend their wedding night, their first night together as man and wife. As they prepare for what is to come, they each reflect back on how their separate lives came to be intertwined, how they journeyed through their lives to arrive at this hotel, together, married.  McEwan's focus is more on the “why” than the “what” of this evening in Edward and Florence's lives, and necessarily so, in order to provide more depth to what could have easily been simply a good short story.

Edward and Florence are inherently different people, and McEwan's use of musical references throughout the novel highlights the point and counterpoint that defines their relationship with each other. It is the 60s, and Edward is drawn to the rock and roll and blues music that will define the era. Florence comes from a privileged background, and unsurprisingly, she prefers classical music, playing the violin in a string quartet that will become her lifelong passion and occupation. When she hears Edward's music, she is appalled, and doesn't understand the point of having drums when a perfectly good metronome would keep the beat for the musicians.

Edward is passionately in love with Florence and wants to love her completely, body and soul. He is looking forward to experiencing intercourse for the first time on his wedding night, but is anxious about his performance. Florence is in love with the idea of a lover, a suitor, a wedding, a husband. For her, adult life will only begin when she is married. Rooted in her times, she craves the independence from her parents that married life will provide. Like other women of her age and era, she is naturally preoccupied with the search for a husband, and her eventual wedding will herald her success in this quest. For her, it is almost as if the “happily ever after” pronouncement, that will mark the end of her life story, will occur at the altar, in her white dress and veil, not during the actual, intimate life she will lead with her husband for her remaining days on the earth.   And so, in order to ensure that Edward will propose to her, and because she does genuinely love him, Florence endures the physical overtures that Edward makes towards her, in spite of the fact that she is not only not interested in that aspect of their relationship, but is actually revolted by it.  She believes that when she is married, she will learn how to tolerate her “wifely duties.”

During dinner at their hotel on Chesil Beach, Edward and Florence both dread the next part of their wedding night, for very different reasons. Florence, in particular, would prefer to delay or even avoid the whole situation. Eventually, though, they must retire to their bedchamber, and this is where their whole relationship comes undone. The combination of Florence's fears and revulsion, and Edward's nerves, leads to a teary confrontation on the beach, during which Florence makes a shocking suggestion. Edward's rejection of this, and Florence 's subsequent abdication of their wedding night, will change both of their lives forever.  McEwan points out:

“ This is how the entire course of a life can be changed — by doing nothing.“

McEwan's writing is pure and crystalline, elegant in its simplicity, and carefully crafted in its imagery. The overall effect is poignant and haunting — for the majority of the novel. McEwan is skillful in using third person narration to alternately describe events from Edward's or Florence's point of view, as he weaves the events of their wedding night with their flashbacks to their separate and shared pasts. After their final confrontation on the beach, however, he accelerates the story to the present day and in the space of a few pages, fills the reader in on the remaining decades of Edward's life, his aftermath. This creates a jarring effect that spoils the poignancy of the novel and seems as if he wrote it in a rush in order to wrap up any loose ends of the story. It is an unfortunate ending to an otherwise exceptional novel.

Is On Chesil Beach exceptional enough to win the 2007 Booker Prize? The TurboBookSnob does not think so. As good as it is, it does not have the depth of some of the other novels on the list and will probably not be McEwan's second Booker Prize. At least the TurboBookSnob hopes not – she would like to see him tie Peter Carey's two Bookers with something a bit more worthy, along the lines of Atonement, for example.

“Even in his sixties, a large, stout man with receding white hair and a pink, healthy face, he kept up the long hikes. His daily walk still took in the avenue of limes, and in good weather he would take a circular route to look at the wildflowers on the common at Maidensgrove or the butterflies in the nature rescue in Bix Bottom, returning through the beechwoods to Pishill church, where, he though, he too would one day be buried. Occasionally, he would come to a forking of the paths deep in a beechwood and idly think that this was where she might have paused to consult her map that morning in August, and he would imagine her vividly, only a few feet and forty years away, intent on finding him. Or he would pause by a view over the Stonor Valley and wonder whether this was where she stopped to eat her orange. At least he could admit to himself that he had never met anyone he loved as much, that he had never found anyone, man or woman, who matched her seriousness. Perhaps if he had stayed with her, he would have been more focused and ambitious about his own life, he might have written those history books. It was not his kind of thing at all, but he knew that the Ennismore Quartet was eminent, and was still a revered feature of the classical music scene. He would never attend the concerts, or buy, or even look at, the boxed sets of Beethoven or Schubert. He did not want to see her photograph and discover what the years had wrought, or hear about the details of her life. He preferred to preserve her as she was in his memories, with the dandelion in her buttonhole and the piece of velvet in her hair, the canvas bag across her shoulder, and the beautiful strong-boned face with its wide and artless smile.

When he thought of her, it rather amazed him, that he had let that girl with her violin go. Now, of course, he saw that her self-effacing proposal was quite irrelevant. All she had needed was the certainty of his love, and his reassurance that there was no hurry when a lifetime lay ahead of them. Love and patience — if only he had had them both at once — would surely have seen them both through. And then what unborn children might have had their changes, what young girl with an Alice band might have become his loved familiar? This is how the entire course of a life can be changed —by doing nothing. On Chesil Beach he could have called out to Florence , he could have gone after her. He did not know, or would not have cared to know, that as she ran away from him, certain in her distress that she was about to lose him, she had never loved him more, or more hopelessly, and that the sound of his voice would have been a deliverance, and she would have turned back. Instead, he stood in cold and righteous silence in the summer's dusk, watching her hurry along the shore, the sound of her difficult progress lost to the breaking of small waves, until she was a blurred, receding point against the immense straight road of shingle gleaming in the pallid light.”