On Chesil Beach
Author: Ian McEwan
Rating: * *
McEwan’s novels are often rightly praised for their close and beautiful analysis of human relationships. However, most of the time, these relationships are well-established before we encounter them and McEwan leans heavily on the narrator’s benefit of hindsight. Even in Atonement, the new-born relationship and its failures are only closely analysed years later.
In this sense, On Chesil Beach is a must for any McEwan fan. It places us in real-time, on the eve of a wedding night. As usual for McEwan, background information interrupts the narrative, but our minds are kept firmly in the room with the newlyweds, trapped by their naïvety and embarrassment.
Unfortunately, the symbolism doesn’t quite work, and the formulaic switches between past and present are getting dangerously close to being boring. There is not enough complication. We appreciate his concept within a few pages, an unexpected weakness for McEwan. In essence, this book is worth a read, but feels sadly like a failed experiment; McEwan without his tools. Go back and read Atonement, and feel better. Or possibly worse.
