Details
Rent On Chesil Beach
Author:
Narrator: Ian McEwan
Format: Unabridged-CD, Paperback
Publisher: Random House
Published: Jun 2007
Genre: Fiction - Literary
Retail Price: $29.95
Discs: 4
Synopsis
A novel of remarkable depth and poignancy from one of the most acclaimed writers of our time.
It is July 1962. Florence is a talented musician who dreams of a career on the concert stage and of the perfect life she will create with Edward, an earnest young history student at University College of London, who unexpectedly wooed and won her heart. Newly married that morning, both virgins, Edward and Florence arrive at a hotel on the Dorset coast. At dinner in their rooms they struggle to suppress their worries about the wedding night to come. Edward, eager for rapture, frets over Florence's response to his advances and nurses a private fear of failure, while Florence's anxieties run deeper: she is overcome by sheer disgust at the idea of physical contact, but dreads disappointing her husband when they finally lie down together in the honeymoon suite.
Ian McEwan has caught with understanding and compassion the innocence of Edward and Florence at a time when marriage was presumed to be the outward sign of maturity and independence. On Chesil Beach is another masterwork from McEwan'a story of lives transformed by a gesture not made or a word not spoken.
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Reviews
There's nothing better than a book read by the author. And in this case, the story of the details of a wedding night are so beautifully described it feels like you are inside the characters heads in real time.
The reviews I read discouraged me from reading On Chesil Beach, although I have enjoyed McEwan's other books. So when I finally got to it, I was pleasantly surprised. Far more than the story of a honeymoon gone awry, the book is a view of an earlier age. It's not a 'pageturner' but I enjoyed it and recommend it to readers who enjoy literary fiction.