[ book tip by Ann Morgan ] July, 1962. Two young, intelligent people sit together at a dinner table in a hotel on the Dorset coast. It is their wedding night and they are both virgins and they are scared. So begins Ian McEwan’s taut and compelling masterpiece, On Chesil Beach. Focusing almost entirely on the events of the night itself, the novel showers the reader with the sparks that fly when private emotion and public convention are pitted against one another. Written with wit and affection, the narrative delineates the tragic failure to connect of two characters caught between their personal anxieties and the expectations heaped upon them by the world at large. Reading the book, you have the feeling of looking at life under the microscope, where every gesture, every thought is captured and magnified, loaded with meaning that will resonate throughout the rest of the characters’ lives. Also present is the tantalising awareness of the fine balance of action and re-action; the ease with which a word or look can skew a moment and send the course of events barrelling quite another way.   

On Chesil Beach provides contemporary reader with a compelling window on the past, in which he can see his own face reflected and staring back. It is one of the best books written so far this century.

[ book info ] McEwan, Ian: On Chesil Beach. (Book language: English) Vintage, 2008 (2007). ISBN: 9780099512790.