February Is for Lovers: Ian McEwan's "On Chesil Beach: A Novel"

In On Chesil Beach, McEwan channels a thought-provoking intensity into newly-weds and sexual exploration

On Chesil Beach: A Novel by Ian McEwan
Hardcover, 203 pages
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Price: $22
Published: 2007

This book review was originally published in MotherTown in 2007.

It is July 1962 in Dorset, England. Florence Ponting and Edward Mayhew have just wed. The couple is sharing their first meal alone as husband and wife in the honeymoon suite of their hotel at Chesil Beach. A four-poster bed is visible in the room adjacent to their tiny dining room. Florence and Edward are 22-years-old, and they are both virgins.

"Almost strangers," Ian McEwan writes in his 11th novel On Chesil Beach, "they stood, strangely together, on a new pinnacle of existence, gleeful that their new status [as a married couple] promised to promote them out of their endless youth — Edward and Florence, free at last! . . . . From these new heights they could see clearly, but they could not describe to each other certain contradictory feelings: They separately worried about the moment, sometime soon after dinner, when their new maturity would be tested, when they would lie down together on the four-poster bed and reveal themselves fully to each other."

The consummation of the Mayhews' marriage is the subject of On Chesil Beach. This topic may seem to be a rather minor idea on which to write a novel, but when it's an idea in the hands of Ian McEwan, who possesses a profound insight into the human condition and is regarded as one of Britain's leading novelists, it takes on a thought-provoking intensity that is anything but trivial.

Incidentally, the only feature of On Chesil Beach that is small is its length. It is 203 pages. Much like a short story or even poetry, this condensed form of writing requires a precise approach. There is not room for unnecessary exposition and weak character development. As a master of fiction, McEwan (Saturday, 2005; Atonement, 2001; Amsterdam, 1998; Enduring Love, 1997) knows this — and more important, he demonstrates it in the two distinct and truly memorable characters he creates and puts at the center of his incisive exploration of sexual intimacy.

For Florence, a classical violinist, and Edward, a lover of blues and English rock who studied history at University College in London, their ideas and opinions about sex are divergent, and neither one of them knows what the other is thinking. Bound by an era when a "conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible," they enter into marriage without ever discussing their expectations and pathways to gratification. They are constrained by their reserve.

Florence is guided by a philosophy that avoids confrontation. "She knew very well that people fell out, even stormily, and then made up. But she did not know how to start — she simply did not have the trick of it, the row that cleared the air, and could never quite believe that hard words could be unsaid or forgotten. Best to keep it simple."

To Edward's way of thinking, life "was not so simple," especially when it came to "engaging with Florence's shyness. He had come to respect it, even revere it, mistake it for a form of coyness, a conventional veil for a richly sexual nature. . . . He persuaded himself that he preferred her this way. He did not spell it out for himself, but her reticence suited his own ignorance and lack of confidence. . . ." Therefore, that moment that promises them "boundless sensual freedom" and "mindless ecstasy" — the essential, seemingly straightforward wedding-night event — is encumbered by decorum and a dearth of communication.

This inability to articulate the most serious stirrings of the heart has far-reaching implications — as McEwan's unwavering talent illustrates from beginning to end and oftentimes in the subtlest language. When reality is built on that which is unspoken, a chasm between what is and what is perceived forms. Everything that follows thereafter is circumscribed; the outcome may not be what is intended or desired, but it is the natural consequence of suppression, of keeping silent. For Florence and Edward, the unspoken seals their fate.

On Chesil Beach is evocative, insightful, and sensual. It may not take long to read, but it will linger in memory long after the last word is read.