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| On Chesil Beach | 
 enlarge | Author: Ian Mcewan
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: £6.99
Buy Used: £0.12
You Save: £6.87 (98%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  70 reviews
Sales Rank: 778
Media: Paperback
Pages: 176
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5.1 x 0.6
ISBN: 0099512793
EAN: 9780099512790
ASIN: 0099512793
Publication Date: January 3, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
| Showing reviews 66-70 of 70 | | « PREV 1 ... | | |
 What one would expect from Ian McEwan January 9, 2008
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
Ian McEwan seems to be the gold standard for British writing at present. Anyone who has read Atonement knows what to expect - the beginning of that book is probably the best, most captivating prose I have come across.
On Chesil Beach is clearly from the same pen. It is well crafted and paced, drawing the reader in and holding them until the denouement. I was captivated even though I didn't particularly like either character.
The social mores of the time are central to the work and I was quite surprised that even in the early 60s young people were quite so hemmed in. It felt more like the fifties to me - but I'm sure Ian has done his homework on the period.
Some say this should have won the Man Booker 2007 but I imagine the judges felt this novella is not quite substantial enough. In terms of literary satisfaction it was more like a wonderful weekend away rather than a full holiday.
Nevertheless a terrific achievement.
 Last chapter spoiled by first turgid four January 8, 2008
22 out of 33 found this review helpful
Memo: from Bob to Joannie (secretary)
Joannie - can you get in touch with that McEwan fellow please? Tell him we need another something from him fairly soon, seeing as how he's a big name now and it'd be a really good idea to get another something out while the iron's hot as it were, OK?
And tell him not to worry too much. First of all, that `a whole book about a day' went down pretty well last time, (for whatever reason but who's arguing, eh! lol) and it worked OK for that Joyce Whatsername all those years ago as well, so maybe he could develop something along those lines? I dunno - how about a book about just one evening? Then it could be shorter and we'll all be happy but still make a bomb. And if it's an evening, how about - let's chuck it out there and see if it sticks, eh? - how about a honeymoon night that doesn't work out too well, know what I mean (nudge nudge wink wink!!) Put in a bit of the old psychological hoohah too, and we've got a winner I'd reckon.
Oh - and here's another thought - why not set it in the 1960s or something? Then all he's got to do to build in a bit of background is give a quick mensh to things like Humber cars and Harold Macmillan and rock and roll and Suez (or was that later? don't worry, Joe Public won't know anyway) and Bob's your uncle, we've got some of your old temporal setting.
Secondly he doesn't have to worry about telling a story. Let's face it, he hasn't done that for a while anyway and that last one (Saturday was it?) was a big joke but we got away with it. And dialogue isn't a big deal either - of course he's really really good at that, so perhaps he'd like to slip a bit in towards the end for example, but tell him it's OK for him to just tell the readers what X and Y are thinking, he doesn't have to worry about writing dialogue to show what they're thinking (quicker that way too, I'd guess).
Oh, and he might like to know we've got some blurb ready already - you know, `writer at the height of his powers' kind of thing - so doesn't really matter what he comes up with, we'll push it and make sure it gets on that Brooker prize list or whatever it is, satisfaction guaranteed I'd say.
So give him a ring, would you? See what he can do. Tell him about 150 pages should do the trick.
Free for lunch?
Cheers, Bob
Memo: from Joannie to Bob
Sorry, lunch not on. But I gave Mr M a buzz and he says fine, he'll have it on your desk by Monday morning.
Was I reading a different book? January 8, 2008
8 out of 14 found this review helpful
I think I must have been reading a different book. Extremely disappointing - I did not care what happened to these characters. Starts reasonably well and declines, the book is short but still manages to drag out scenes you want to end. You can finish it in a couple of hours - thankfully. Iam McEwan focusing on the trivial and self-indulgent.
Loving a Stranger December 27, 2007
28 out of 37 found this review helpful
Established admirers of Ian McEwan will need no encouragement to acquire this book, but for those of you who are new to his work this is a very good entry point into his world. McEwan's writing is always highly intelligent, fluent and carefully considered with his trademark quality being an ability to write about relationships and events with great emotional authenticity. All these qualities are present in On Chesil Beach ostensibly the story of a honeymoon wrecked by sexual tension, but in fact a much deeper study of the development of human character and the role played by family background in shaping the adult persona. McEwan is particularly sensitive in depicting the way in which couples who fall in love project an image of themselves which they think their chosen partner wants to see avoiding or putting off potential areas of conflict or disappointment. The very thin line between adoration and contempt is also explored within the claustrophobic setting of a wedding night, the nervous tension of the couple palpable as they begin married life on a historical cusp between the repressed 1950's and the liberated Sixties. In reality, McEwan's themes are timeless and centre on our expectations of marriage and sex and it's enormous impact on our own self esteem: here the selfishness of being in love is perceptively exposed. At 166 pages this is a highly readable novel only slightly marred by an ending which adds little to what has gone before. Recommended.
On Chesil Beach September 12, 2007
12 out of 18 found this review helpful
Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach is conspicuous in its brevity. It has the air of a quickly written novella, an act of catharsis to exorcise some thematic threads between novels. Sadly one is left with a feeling that more could have been made of this scenario and the characters, and concerning the profound central premise: can love be consummated without sex? Can love be fully realised without a passionate physical dimension?
McEwan places this novel at the cultural crossroads of the early 1960s, just before embedded social notions of sex and marriage were to be violently uprooted. As ever, McEwan takes time to breathe life into his characters, using the basic premise as a jumping off point for exploring their personal histories. He is a modern master at tapping into the private fears, expectations and indignations between men and women, explored more fully in his previous novels. His words fly off the page without seeming facile; thought-provoking without being stylistically ostentatious.
However, one is left at the end - which I will try not to spoil here - with a rushed, unfinished feeling. It might have been better if McEwan left the ending more open and ambiguous, than to hurriedly conclude as he has done. In fact I often feel slightly let down by the way McEwan ends his novels, ending as they normally do in bloody denouement - undermining the tighter and more considered preceding passages. Here the ending is not so prosaic, but the reader is still left wanting more.
One other criticism is some of the authorial intrusions into the narrative. It is a slightly cheap way to set a sense of time and place to say 'this was not a good moment in the history of English cuisine'. According to the characters? It seems unlikely. It is asides like this that corrupt the tangible sense of Britain lived through the characters themselves, trapped by their failure to communicate, and by things left unsaid by society at large. If we are to suspend our disbelief, we need the author to be a less obvious presence, not giving us a nod and a wink over his laptop in the 21st century. Otherwise this is a very readable, sometimes moving book, that is probably best read in the course of one afternoon.
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