It is June, 1962. In a hotel on the Dorset coast, overlooking Chesil Beach, Edward and Florence, who got married that morning, are sitting down to dinner in their room. Neither is entirely able to suppress their anxieties about the wedding night to come ..."On Chesil Beach" is another masterwork from Ian McEwan - a story about how the entire course of a life can be changed by a gesture not made or a word not spoken.
Accolades
Shortlisted for Independent Booksellers' Book of the Year Award: Adults 2007.
Shortlisted for Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2007.
Shortlisted for RTÃ Radio 1's The Turbidy Show Listeners' Choice Award 2008.
Reviews
Guardian
'In its precision, scope and force, this is an astounding novel, more tender than anything McEwan has hitherto produced'
Waterstone's Books Quarterly
`slow, detailed prose... reads like a pale memory of a forgotten age... a writer in complete control of his craft'
Sunday Express
`...a real knack comes in the emotional authenticity he imparts when writing about relationships and feelings...yet another masterpiece.'
'This breathtaking novel, Ian McEwan's 11th, tells the story of that night. Like a number of his previous books -- among them The Cement Garden, The Comfort of Strangers, Black Dogs and Amsterdam-- On Chesil Beach is more a novella than a novel, weighing in at around 40,000 words, but like those other books it is in no important sense a miniature. Instead, it takes on subjects of universal interest -- innocence and naiveté, self-delusion, desire and repression, opportunity lost or rejected -- and creates a small but complete universe around them. McEwan's prose is as masterly as ever, here striking a remarkably subtle balance between detachment and sympathy, dry wit and deep compassion. It reaffirms my conviction that no one now writing in English surpasses or even matches McEwan's accomplishment.' The Washington Post
Author Biography
Ian McEwan is the author of two collections of stories and ten previous novels, including Enduring Love, Amsterdam, for which he won the Booker Prize in 1998, Atonement and Saturday.
