Review Consensus: Not quite a consensus, but the majority are impressed
From the Reviews:
"This is a small novel, 160 pages, but a very concentrated one; a miniature aware of the world beyond it. So when the powerful ending comes (and two years later we could have witnessed a completely different outcome), there's a lot behind it. Some might find the summing up a bit too neat; I didn't. It's the necessary step back, the distancing effect that puts one rotten hour into historical perspective." - Steven Carroll, The Age
"McEwan, a '60s child if ever there was one, comes to remind us that there were losers, all right, and that there still are. It would be less interesting to term this a generational achievement than a national one. Only Philip Larkin has ever decribed sex more bleakly than McEwan does here. No fumble, miscue, or calamity is omitted." - Christopher Hitchens, The Atlantic Monthly
"Mr McEwan's prose is, as always, intense and visually descriptive, but in this elegantly crafted novel his skill lies in his illumination of an evening taut with emotional paralysis and in his portrayal of missed opportunity. As events move forward to the book's dénouement, On Chesil Beach becomes much more than a simple story of emotions held in check by convention. It is a memorable exposé of how terrible wounds can be inflicted and the entire course of a life changed -- by doing nothing." - The Economist
"To reveal what lies in store would lessen the pleasure of reading this small masterpiece, though it's hard to imagine that anything could spoil it." - Jennifer Reese, Entertainment Weekly
"Yet it would be wrong to see this novella as showing the liberated, therapeutically enabled present triumphing unambiguously over the past's stifling repressions and conventions. For, paradoxically, the fullness with which Edward and Florence's inner lives are explored depends wholly on their reticence and embarrassment, on their inability to talk to each other. Indeed, the power of the narrative as a whole derives from the painful seriousness with which they brood, from their antithetical perspectives, on the moment when, as Edward imagines it, "the most sensitive portion of himself would reside, however briefly, within a naturally formed cavity inside this cheerful, pretty, formidably intelligent woman". The book's poignant final pages evince an almost wistful nostalgia for the years before." - Mark Ford, Financial Times
"Kühl und mit einer Präzision, die ans Bösartige grenzt, verfolgt McEwan in dieser genialen Tragödie der Verkennungen, wie zwei Liebende einander immer wieder verfehlen, um Millimeter nur und am Ende endgültig." - Hubert Spiegel, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
"These currents of excitement and dread are following such different directions that it is hardly surprising that by the end of the novel, which comes quite quickly, just a few hours and about 150 pages later, the "infinite shingle" of Chesil Beach has become the backdrop to solitude rather than communion. This plot may sound inconsequential -- bad sex in English hotel shock! -- but McEwan manages to give it almost tragic impact. This is partly because we come to sympathise so intensely with Florence and Edward's idealistic expectations of intimacy (…..) No, what matters is whether the novel works as fiction. And it does. Some of the prose in the passages away from the bedroom is more workaday than we have come to expect from McEwan, and lacks the panache of his recent work. The exploration of Florence's love of music, particularly, never quite flares into life. Yet within the bedroom this couple's hesitant attempts at intimacy are nuanced and delicately realised." - Natasha Walter, The Guardian
"The unease in this book is mostly sexual. The young couple are hopelessly mismatched sexually (…..) (I)t is a fine book, homing in with devastating precision on a kind of Englishness which McEwan understands better than any other living writer, the Englishness of deceit, evasion, repression and regret. In On Chesil Beach McEwan has combined the intensity of his narrowly focused early work with his more expansive later flowering to devastating effect." - Justin Cartwright, Independent on Sunday
"On Chesil Beach, however, is full of odd echoes and has elements of folk tale, which make the pleasures of reading it rather greater than the joys of knowing what happened in the end. (…) The style of the book may seem plain: there is no recourse to the use of cadence for effect, and there are no elaborate sentences or pyrotechnics of any sort. We are, after all, in England, where words mean what they say. So numerous are the images of stability and continuity in these years of peace and prosperity, that the reader takes them for granted. The sheer skill in holding tone, and playing with it, is hidden much of the time. The novel is a pure comedy, but it is told from the point of view of the two protagonists who do not think it is funny at all, and this is managed without making either of them seem tedious." - Colm Tóibín, London Review of Books
"On Chesil Beach is a linguistic balancing act, each sentence delicately positioning itself both by historical co-ordinates -- an early-Sixties world of Austin 35s and wireless news bulletins -- and by more private reference points -- the separate anxieties and assumptions of the young bride and groom. McEwan, as Atonement demonstrated, is at his best with this finely tuned historical pastiche. The period detail allows him some virtuosic touches (…..) McEwan's forensic account of the warring couple's partialities (…) is perfectly constructed, but fails to throw off the feel of a private technical exercise. In a novel so reliant on bias and conviction, a little more authorly engagement would be welcome." - Rachel Aspden, New Statesman
"(A) small, sullen, unsatisfying story that possesses none of those earlier books’ emotional wisdom, narrative scope or lovely specificity of detail. (…) (H)e’s given us a smarmy portrait of two incomprehensible and unlikable people." - Michiko Kautani, The New York Times
"The situation is miniature and enormous, dire and pathetic, tender and irrevocable. McEwan treats it with a boundless sympathy, one that enlists the reader even as it disguises the fact that this seeming novel of manners is as fundamentally a horror novel as any McEwan’s written, one that carries with it a David Cronenberg sensitivity to what McEwan calls "the secret affair between disgust and joy. " (…) If On Chesil Beach is a horror novel, it is also as fundamentally a comedy, one with virtual Monty Python overtones" - Jonathan Lethem, The New York Times Book Review
"There is a fairy-tale quality to the book, in that everything that follows seems inevitable. The minute currents of tension that change a conversation and a life are so crucial to McEwan's method that it would be unfair to give away every last turn in his narrative. Towards the end, when fates have been sealed, it seems to Edward 'that an explanation of his existence would take up a minute, less than half a page'. Such is the deft compression of McEwan's art here that, in his hands, such a formulation does not seem far from the truth." - Tim Adams, The Observer
"Communication failure is at the center of his tale, and he evokes it with heartbreaking eloquence." - Kyle Smith, People
"But after On Chesil Beach climaxes, the masterfully modulated denouement fast-forwards through the decades to come to our present day -- and prods us to consider what this book really is." - Ed Park, Salon
"Every detail in On Chesil Beach tells the reader that the new age has not yet dawned (…..) Some may call this book a novella, because it is a mere 30,000 words long, but it is in fact a fully realized novel, more than worthy of the grander appellation. Not only is it full of meaningful, organically significant details, but its narrative ebbs and flows in a way that demonstrates the most masterly narrative control. The story unfolds in a perfect manner, withholding now and then for effect, even omitting sometimes, with the result that On Chesil Beach is not only a wonderful read but also perhaps that rarest of things: a perfect novel." - Martin Rubin, San Francisco Chronicle
"The finest passages in On Chesil Beach are the tremulous vacillations experienced by the couple, a sad mixture of stage-fright, clumsy slapstick and tender awkwardness. In the bleak aftermath, the emotional pendulum swings between pity and fury, embarrassment and apology, with each partner's self-doubts and aggrieved resentments interlocking and interchanging. It might, in a way, have been a rather good short story. On Chesil Beach, however, manages to feel too thin and too long simultaneously. (...) The concentration on the consequences of their unfortunate first night seems bizarrely disproportionate, a feeling exacerbated by McEwan's sometimes slapdash plotting elsewhere. (...)On Chesil Beach leaves the reader, like its two confused, disgusted and recriminating characters, utterly unfulfilled." - Stuart Kelly, Scotland on Sunday
"As it turns out, McEwan’s concern for his characters’ individual humanity and his interest in the larger historical movement end up being somewhat at odds; they refuse, in the end, to embody sociological analysis. Liberation, in this novel, happens somewhere else. But that can only be to the benefit of the humanity of this small but interesting novel. I like it much more than McEwan’s last six novels, at least. (…) The novel is saved by an honest familiarity with individual psychology, and by the fact that it is, really, all about sex, which McEwan certainly does understand. The larger movements of history, however, enter into these lives in ways which are all too much like the novel that Professor Peter Hennessy might write about the period." - Philip Hensher, The Spectator
"Clean of sprawl and clutter -- not a word, incident or image seems slackly placed -- the book never hardens into the schematic. Where McEwan’s earliest handlings of one of his dominant themes -- attempts to attain and sustain loving partnerships -- often seemed diagrams of male and female stereotypes, everything here is alive with human complexity. (…) Subtle, witty, rueful and sometimes heartrending, On Chesil Beach coalesces these perceptions into a novel that is a master feat of concentration in both senses of the word." - Peter Kemp, Sunday Times
"McEwan exposes the rationalisations and self-deceptions we all succumb to in situations of great emotional uncertainty, the shifts in perception that show what changeable and unpredictable beings we can be to ourselves, let alone one another. In doing so, the book takes us deeper into two people's lives, counter-pointing the tensions of the present with the great backwash of their past and the surging of a future neither can fully see." - Mark Mordue, Sydney Morning Herald
"Writing in the third person, McEwan gives the reader access to both characters' thoughts with his usual skill, and the comedy of embarrassment, or of the kind of erotic misunderstanding that Milan Kundera used to specialise in, quickly disappears as the marital bed begins to seem more and more ominous. (…) It's a pleasure to watch McEwan fleshing out his characters, expertly shifting chronology and point of view around as he prepares for the coming bedroom scene and its aftermath. (…) Part of the problem might be that McEwan's use of suspense makes you forget that startling revelations aren't the point, that his writing is strongest in its texture and detail and masterly narrative set-pieces." - Christopher Tayler, The Telegraph
"Because this is a slight book, it would be unfair to detail the unfolding of this evening any further. Suffice it to say that the tiny tragedy of one wedding night -- which has large-scale implications -- is heartbreaking, understandable from both parties' perspectives, and sickeningly unnecessary." - Lionel Shriver, The Telegraph
"For the reader, the ending of On Chesil Beach comes too soon. Its devastating concluding passage, in which we glimpse the future that flows from the events of the honeymoon night, feels almost like the sketch of a larger novel of which this is merely the first section. Still, the experience of finishing a novel with regret is not so frequent that one should complain of it. Better to say with gratitude that McEwan’s latest fiction is full of richness: of serious thought about the nature of love and human relationships, informed by a poetic sensibility and expressed in prose whose lyricism never errs on the side of self-indulgence." - Jane Shilling, The Times
"A new book by him has long been an event. This new book, though, On Chesil Beach, is more than an event. It is a masterpiece. The very idea that informs it, fascinating and unfamiliar, is masterly. (…) The novel has felicities which ensure, rather than embellish, the humanity of its treatment of the lovers' predicament. (…) Ian McEwan is serious, but not solemn, in his unfolding of this predicament, and of surrounding disorders." - Karl Miller, Times Literary Supplement
"This slim novel -- a novella, really -- works as a parable of failed empathy. (…) This backward-looking stance, this assumption that the couple may have prospered had they been born a few years later, risks a charge of smugness. It carries more than a whiff of author knows best. The chapters detailing their respective childhoods and schooling sometimes have the same tone, a too-assured intimation that their pasts neatly account for their present difficulties. But such criticisms fall away when McEwan returns to the wedding night itself, scrupulously describing the mordant, melancholy comedy of it, the tragedy it gives rise to." - Alexis Soloski, The Village Voice
"(B)reathtaking (…..) (I)t is in no important sense a miniature. Instead, it takes on subjects of universal interest -- innocence and naiveté, self-delusion, desire and repression, opportunity lost or rejected -- and creates a small but complete universe around them. McEwan's prose is as masterly as ever, here striking a remarkably subtle balance between detachment and sympathy, dry wit and deep compassion. It reaffirms my conviction that no one now writing in English surpasses or even matches McEwan's accomplishment." - Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post
"So reich der schmale Roman an Beobachtungen, an Geschichten, an Beschreibungen gerade der immer wieder abstoppenden sexuellen Begegnungen der beiden ist (selten wurde ein Zungenkuss derart zum Abgewöhnen ausgenüchtert geschildert), so eng sind sie geführt. Wenn man diesem Schachtelalbtraum von einer Geschichte etwas vorwerfen kann, dann ist es -- neben der Kleinigkeit, dass McEwan sich im Epilog auf den psychologisch uninteressanteren Edward konzentriert -- ausgerechnet seine Meisterschaft: dass bis ins letzte Bild alles stimmt, dass noch die kleinste Subgeschichte ein Ziel hat, dass kaum Dunkelheiten bleiben. Wie ein wiedergefundenes Meisterwerk des Fin de siècle liest sich Am Strand" - Elmar Krekeler, Die Welt
"In seinem neuen Roman Am Strand nun überkreuzen sich diese sonst so genau kalkulierten Pläne, es geraten Literatur und Zeitdiagnose ordentlich durcheinander -- was vielleicht der Grund ist für das seltsam leblose und, schlimmer noch bei dem Thema, lustlose Scheitern dieses Sexromans vor dem Zeitalter des Sex." - Georg Dietz, Die Zeit
Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.
- Return to top of the page -
The complete review's Review:
On Chesil Beach centres around the wedding night of Edward and Florence, and McEwan gets right to the point in his opening line:
They were young, educated, and both virgins on this, their wedding night, and they lived in a time when a conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible. But it is never easy. McEwan describes that wedding night in painful, exacting detail, from the meal they have in their room all the way through to the bitter end on the beach. He pulls back to fill in background -- their families and upbringing, their circumstances, their relationship -- but then always zooms back in to the wedding night. And you just know it's not going to go well. The time is 1962, and Edward and Florence are perhaps even worse equipped than most to deal with sexual difficulty than most of their contemporaries. They're deeply in love, but the physical has proved problematic during their courtship. Over the months Edward made some headway, but it never came easy, and Florence doesn't really take to much physical intimacy -- his tongue in her mouth when they, kiss for example. She has vague ideas of what to expect now, and she's dreading it:
Her problem, she thought, was greater, deeper, than straightforward physical disgust; her whole being was in revolt against a prospect of entanglement and flesh; her composure and essential happiness were about to be violated.
Indeed:
being touched "down there" by someone else, even someone she loved, was as repulsive as, say, a surgical procedure on the eye. Yes, Florence's attitude is pathological; worse yet, she hasn't made it entirely clear to Edward how she feels about this act they're supposed to engage in. Edward has some sense of Florence's qualms, but he's so over-excited about finally getting this far that he doesn't pay enough attention. The exquisitely awkward dance they do as Florence tries to maneuver herself around the inevitable is wonderfully captured by McEwan, from both their vantage points. Marvellously, it comes even worse than expected, as Edward contributes to the mess with his own sexual difficulties (let's just say that his decision to lay off gratifying himself in the days before the wedding looks like it left him more precariously bottled-up than is healthy). Instead of awkward consummation what we get is sexual disaster.
McEwan doesn't let it end there; indeed, what's decisive is how they handle this mess they've gotten themselves into. That's what what interests McEwan, and that's where their real failure lies. They finally get some of the words out into the open, as they finally try discuss sex, but they're not very good at that either -- hardly surprising, given that they've never had a go at talking about it to anyone, on top of the terrible pas-de-deux they were just part of. Both partners' pasts contribute to the situation. Edward is used to living if not a lie then at least a very warped truth, having been brought up to treat his mother as if everything she did was normal when, in fact, little is, as she's been unhinged since an accident that left her in a coma for a week when he was a young boy. His father finally tells him about the accident that left her brain-damaged when he is fourteen, news that's not really news but still changes everything. "What I've said changes absolutely nothing", his father insists -- but then that's part of the problem. As before: "the fantasy could be sustained only if it was not discussed", and that's pretty much how they go on.
As for Florence, being a late bloomer is hardly explanation enough for her pathological feelings about sex. McEwan doesn't come right out and say it, but there are strong hints that a childhood trauma involving her father is at the root of it. Certainly, there's something off about that father-daughter relationship; even dense Edward notices that. (It's almost a shame that McEwan had to go that far; surely the unsettling weirdness of sex to a sheltered child of the times might have been enough to get him nearly as far.)
On Chesil Beach is a period-piece, McEwan focussing very hard on that time before the so-called sexual-revolution. It's not nostalgic, but he is trying to capture an era and he's very explicit about it, constantly reminding the reader of this different time (down to noting that: "This was not a good moment in the history of English cuisine" when discussing their meal). It's not just the sexual mores and understanding that he wants to highlight, either: it's also very much a novel about family circumstances, opportunities, and, ultimately, class. Edward is the exception among his classmates in going on to university -- choosing London over Oxford, too, in a minor rebellion. Florence's parents are an academic (her mother) and a successful businessman; complicating the picture is the fact that Edward is hired by her father, his first real job.
Florence is a gifted and ambitious violinist, torn between the different opportunities she has; Edward has little understanding (or true appreciation) of what she does, her classical music remaining all Greek to him. They're very different people, yet McEwan convincingly presents them as in love -- the one constant, that, however, becomes yet another complicating factor.
After the wedding night McEwan also offers an extended coda, of afterwards. He focusses almost entirely on Edward here, describing the changes he undergoes and what becomes of him. It allows McEwan to make his final points -- of realising that a bit of patience, a bit of dialogue, and the power of their love would have been enough, that awkward moments can be handled if they're tackled head-on -- but leaves too much open about Florence (including the question of whether she ever got over her sex-problems).
There's been some discussion of whether On Chesil Beach is a novel or a novella. The small American edition stretches the book out to just over 200 pages -- and has A Novel printed on the cover -- but it's less a matter of length than scope, and On Chesil Beach's failing is that it remains a mere novella even while McEwan suggests (but doesn't follow through on) much larger ambitions. McEwan packs events and character-description into it, but he doesn't dare really move beyond the small story of the wedding night. It's like the notes are here for a larger novel, but everything is like the coda, background to the essential tale, but so much of it that it constantly suggests there should be more.
Successful in large part, the book nevertheless falls short of its larger ambitions, as McEwan chose a middle-ground that isn't entirely satisfying. Neither a compact novella nor a full-blown novel
On Chesil Beach is a very good book, but not entirely satisfying. Still, well worth reading.
- Return to top of the page -
Links: On Chesil Beach:
Showing posts with label Ian McEwan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ian McEwan. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Friday, January 16, 2009
Some critical Reviews of "On Chesil Beach"....
A Talented Wordcrafter Describes an Improbable Honeymoon, July 6, 2007
By
Donald Mitchell "a Practical Optimist" (Boston) - See all my reviews
This review is from: On Chesil Beach: A Novel (Hardcover) If you are easily seduced by beautiful sentences, you'll feel On Chesil Beach is a five-star book. If you love exploring inner dialogue, you'll be even more pleased with this book. If, however, you like your stories to be compelling because of their relevance and interest to your own life, you'll wonder why in the world Mr. McEwan chose to write about this particular problem of poor communications in the context of 1962. As you delve deeper into the book, you'll be even more puzzled by the book's pivotal event and the characters' reactions to it. The short book (neither novella nor full novel) is organized in five parts that seem much like the acts in a Greek tragedy. The opening scene shows a couple dining in their room at an inn. "They were young, educated, and both virgins on this, their wedding night, and they lived in a time when a conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible." The second act describes how they met. The third act takes place in their bedroom in the inn. The fourth act describes their courtship. The fifth act takes place on the beach and in their lives afterward as they attempt and fail to communicate. Mr. McEwan does a good job of capturing your attention through exploring the couple's growing tension as they move toward the consummation of their marriage. But past that point, the story seemed like a punctured balloon to me: My interest was gone. I suspect that reaction is because I didn't feel close to either character; they are more there to entertain me than to lead me into experiencing the story like the characters do. Clearly, the story would have worked much better for me if focused around a more universal trial in marriage, such as handling both sets of parents during the birth of a first child. I also thought that Mr. McEwen played the role of the Greek chorus too often . . . telling us what was going on rather than letting us see and hear the action. The fourth part seems clearly out of place; it should have preceded the third part. Unless you are drawn to beautiful sentences and images, I suggest you skip this book . . . it's a misdirected storytelling foray by a talented writer that is eminently avoidable.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
What might have been, July 4, 2007
By
Ann Nigel James (Menemsha, Martha's Vineyard, MA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: On Chesil Beach: A Novel (Hardcover) As an Ian McEwan virgin, I was eagerly anticipating my tryst with this book--but it turned out to be as disappointing and unsatisfying as Edward's and Florence's wedding night (well, maybe not quite). McEwan does not merely ignore, but actually reverses, the wise "show, don't tell" advice about fiction writing. In his expository chapters about Edward's and Florence's backgrounds and courtship, he doesn't let us see much of them interacting and conversing with each other and their families; instead of fleshing them out in these sections, he gives us their inner thoughts, a panoply of geographical place names that won't mean much to readers outside the U.K. and a list of gourmet vegetables that Edward tastes for the first time at his future in-laws' dinner table: courgettes, aubergines and mangetouts. Conversely, in the play-by-play account of the wedding-night bedroom activities, McEwan "shows" each frame of the encounter with exhaustive, sometimes clinical detail. In this area, less is often more, and although it requires greater effort to write about physical intimacy with subtlety and allusion, it can still evoke the same intense reaction in the reader--without getting the sheets so messy. Do we really need words like "perineum" and the focus on the lone pubic hair that has escaped from Florence's knickers? Since I've already given away my copy of "On Chesil Beach," I can't use exact quotes here, but suffice it to say that the description of Edward's sticky, gummy ejaculate adhering to Florence's knees and chin is over the top--almost as if the author is trying to turn off the reader as well as Florence. The story could have ended effectively and poignantly after the couple's hopeless, near-tragic postcoital verbal battle on the beach, perhaps with a few closing thoughts from the author on the sadness and might-have-been-ness of it all. But instead, there is an anticlimactic final chapter consisting of what sound like afterthoughts, hurriedly recounting Edward's meanderings over the next 40 years. Somewhat mystifyingly, McEwan does not mention Florence's personal life after the traumatic wedding night, although he has paid equal attention to both characters until this last chapter. He does, however, offer an oblique but important clue. In a recent review of "On Chesil Beach," Christopher Hitchens concludes dismissively--and erroneously--that "Florence, a classically trained violinist, devotes the remainder of her life to a rather spinsterish role in a string quartet." Not at all. In an admiring newspaper review of a triumphant performance by that string quartet at Wigmore Hall in Oxford, the fictional reviewer singles out the exceptional playing of the first violinist, who is Florence. "She is obviously in love," writes this critic (to the best of my recollection), "not only with the music and with Mozart, but with life itself." Surely McEwan is implying that Florence, unlike Edward, has ultimately found fulfillment and happiness.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
Could something please happen..., July 27, 2007
By
J. Mills "adventure seeker" (San Diego, CA United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: On Chesil Beach: A Novel (Hardcover) Although I felt that this book was well-written, my attention span was challenged. The book was long on detail and short on action. Simply, it was antclimactic...
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
Not My Cuppa, July 13, 2007
By
David Schweizer "Almawood" (Kansas, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: On Chesil Beach: A Novel (Hardcover) The author is dead on in his description of sexual frustration, I'll hand him that. One does indeed feel as though one knew these people, because what he is describing in the end is the fear of sexual contact. These days such experiences are rare, because by the time they are married, most people have been around the block. But fifty years ago in the world McEwan describes, sex came for the first time on honeymoon night. If the couple can be described as naive, it is only in this one area; otherwise they are sophisticated, if not jaded. The bride is having a hard time accepting French kissing, and fears she may vomit if he probes too deeply. He is afraid he may experience ecstasy before she's ready. This is described in excruciating detail. In fact, the details pile up until one is taking the bride's side: This sex business is an ordeal. The couple is a nervous wreck. The reader finds oneself wondering how the modern age ever was born with this sort of Victorian repression pressing so heavily. This all sounds very 19th century but the author is right to locate this so very late in the 20th century. We may never be free of it. These deeply disturbed individuals need help - not just sexual counseling but probing psychoanalysis and possibly shock treatment. In this sense the book is a revelation - what in God's name was done to these decent people in their childhood to make them so sick? We believe them to be permanently scarred. McEwan no doubt accomplishes what he set out to achieve, but I wonder if it was worth the trouble.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
Love means never having to say..., August 9, 2007
By
JoAnne Goldberg (Silicon Valley, CA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: On Chesil Beach: A Novel (Hardcover) I'm sorry, but what else can you say about a 22-year-old wife who ran away? And who took almost 200 pages to do so, leaving her drooling groom and an untold number of readers on a beach filled with literary quicksand, struggling to find a likeable character or a redeeming bit of plot? As I finished this book, I found myself humming "Where do I begin?" (the theme song from the movie version of Love Story). The similarities between that book and Chesil include length (both books barely squeak past 200 pages) and an ill-fated romance marked by different socioeconomic backgrounds and music. But Edward and Florence are no Oliver and Jenny, and anyone who sheds tears at the end of Chesil is probably mourning the loss of $22 (even the $13.20 amazon price seems steep.) I admire spare, chiseled prose, but McEwan's stiff, unyielding dialog feels wooden rather than trenchant. The book reads like a period piece, a stylized sitting room drama from the turn of the last century. Was Florence molested by her repulsive father? Possibly. But McEwan does his best to depict Edward as a pretty unappetizing boyfriend/husband. Was Edward's inability to sense his bride's emotional state a result of his growing up with a brain-damaged mother in a pigsty of a house? Does it matter? (I have to admit that the description of the mess was probably my favorite part of this otherwise unappealing book.) Though the story describes their courtship, the relationship has so little sizzle that it's hard to understand how the two of them managed to work up the energy to go through with a wedding. After dragging us through the beach spat (their first and only fight? and even that lacked spirit), McEwan decides to take the easy way out. So much for enduring love. While I can accept the premise for most of the book--the stilted, boring couple, the unpleasant parents, the wedding night jitters--a lifelong estrangement defies all experience and common sense. My impression was that McEwan was as tired of these colorless whiners as I was. Finally, the big question: how did this book ever get published? That's a rhetorical question, of course. If anyone else had written this book and managed to get it into the hands of a publisher, he would have been told "nice treatment--shows a lot of promise--bring it back when you're finished." But when you're Ian "Booker Prize" McEwan, editors may be a little too kind. As Ian himself might say, the result can be downright nauseous.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
'
9 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
The ickiness of intimacy, July 27, 2007
By
Julee Rudolf "book snob" (Oak Harbor, WA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: On Chesil Beach: A Novel (Hardcover) As the novella (miniscule font in a small dimensioned book) begins, Florence and Edward are "young [22 years old], educated, and both virgins," newlyweds on their wedding night contemplating the evening's objective: consummation. But considering his prenuptial preparation and nature--prone to making spontaneous relationship decisions in the throes of passion, hers--uptight in the ways of intimacy, what transpires is no surprise. The couple's progress is interrupted at opportune moments for flashbacks into their pasts: a bit on their upbringings, family members, meeting, and courtship. Alternate chapters cover the wedding night. Its final dozen pages fast-forward four decades beyond the honeymoon. On the night in question, she naively suffers from a failure to understand; he just plain misunderstands. Readers, sexually squeamish or not, may also suffer when reading the minutiae of their intimacy, which is, at times, just plain too much information. Better: The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
'
9 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
Clearly in the minority, June 18, 2007
By
Alexander G. Hoffman (Toronto) - See all my reviews
This review is from: On Chesil Beach: A Novel (Hardcover) I fully realize that as I am writing this, I am outnumbered 18-1 in the reviews of this book. Frankly, I absolutly loathed it. Florence and Edward don't, for a second, feel like actual human beings. I never saw any indication of why these two were "in love" or why they would ever have gotten to the point of being married. Edward is married to a woman who pretty much recoils at intimacy and who has made it clear she doesn't want his tongue in her mouth and yet while kissing her, seems to believe she is going to...well...take him in her mouth? Florence suggests, on her wedding night, that she and Edward would be fine as long as he goes out and makes love to other women? Any of this is realistic? The ending just caps it off. It sounds like a guy with a failed life, "talking an ex pretty" believing that it would have worked only "if". I never got the characters, never cared about them, certainly didn't see any reason they were together and just didn't enjoy it.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
Not to be compared to Atonement, March 31, 2008
By
anonymous "mrw" (CA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: On Chesil Beach: A Novel (Hardcover) This is a very short, very pointless novella in my opinion. It is in no way comparable to Atonement. The prose is in McEwan's usual excellent style, but I was left with the feeling, "Is that all?"
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Bittersweet tale, ultimately trite, December 18, 2008
By
Cecil Bothwell "Author of Pure Bunkum" (Asheville, NC USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: On Chesil Beach (Paperback) Ian McEwan set himself the writerly task of composing a novel whose entire action takes place in just a few hours and succeeded. However, along the way he failed to help the reader much care about the young couple whose lives turn on a dime on their honeymoon night. The characters are so two-dimensional that their cataclysm fails the believability test. No one THAT much in love could behave THAT stupidly. McEwan is handy with a phrase, however vacuous the result. If you are fond of TV drama, this may just be your ticket, but life is short and there are more good books to read than you will ever have time to open.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Not as good as his previous works, July 14, 2008
By
Barbara Johnson "Avid Reader" (Baker City, OR USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: On Chesil Beach (Paperback) I have enjoyed this author for years, but Chesil Beach didn't live up to his previous works.
By
Donald Mitchell "a Practical Optimist" (Boston) - See all my reviews
This review is from: On Chesil Beach: A Novel (Hardcover) If you are easily seduced by beautiful sentences, you'll feel On Chesil Beach is a five-star book. If you love exploring inner dialogue, you'll be even more pleased with this book. If, however, you like your stories to be compelling because of their relevance and interest to your own life, you'll wonder why in the world Mr. McEwan chose to write about this particular problem of poor communications in the context of 1962. As you delve deeper into the book, you'll be even more puzzled by the book's pivotal event and the characters' reactions to it. The short book (neither novella nor full novel) is organized in five parts that seem much like the acts in a Greek tragedy. The opening scene shows a couple dining in their room at an inn. "They were young, educated, and both virgins on this, their wedding night, and they lived in a time when a conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible." The second act describes how they met. The third act takes place in their bedroom in the inn. The fourth act describes their courtship. The fifth act takes place on the beach and in their lives afterward as they attempt and fail to communicate. Mr. McEwan does a good job of capturing your attention through exploring the couple's growing tension as they move toward the consummation of their marriage. But past that point, the story seemed like a punctured balloon to me: My interest was gone. I suspect that reaction is because I didn't feel close to either character; they are more there to entertain me than to lead me into experiencing the story like the characters do. Clearly, the story would have worked much better for me if focused around a more universal trial in marriage, such as handling both sets of parents during the birth of a first child. I also thought that Mr. McEwen played the role of the Greek chorus too often . . . telling us what was going on rather than letting us see and hear the action. The fourth part seems clearly out of place; it should have preceded the third part. Unless you are drawn to beautiful sentences and images, I suggest you skip this book . . . it's a misdirected storytelling foray by a talented writer that is eminently avoidable.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
What might have been, July 4, 2007
By
Ann Nigel James (Menemsha, Martha's Vineyard, MA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: On Chesil Beach: A Novel (Hardcover) As an Ian McEwan virgin, I was eagerly anticipating my tryst with this book--but it turned out to be as disappointing and unsatisfying as Edward's and Florence's wedding night (well, maybe not quite). McEwan does not merely ignore, but actually reverses, the wise "show, don't tell" advice about fiction writing. In his expository chapters about Edward's and Florence's backgrounds and courtship, he doesn't let us see much of them interacting and conversing with each other and their families; instead of fleshing them out in these sections, he gives us their inner thoughts, a panoply of geographical place names that won't mean much to readers outside the U.K. and a list of gourmet vegetables that Edward tastes for the first time at his future in-laws' dinner table: courgettes, aubergines and mangetouts. Conversely, in the play-by-play account of the wedding-night bedroom activities, McEwan "shows" each frame of the encounter with exhaustive, sometimes clinical detail. In this area, less is often more, and although it requires greater effort to write about physical intimacy with subtlety and allusion, it can still evoke the same intense reaction in the reader--without getting the sheets so messy. Do we really need words like "perineum" and the focus on the lone pubic hair that has escaped from Florence's knickers? Since I've already given away my copy of "On Chesil Beach," I can't use exact quotes here, but suffice it to say that the description of Edward's sticky, gummy ejaculate adhering to Florence's knees and chin is over the top--almost as if the author is trying to turn off the reader as well as Florence. The story could have ended effectively and poignantly after the couple's hopeless, near-tragic postcoital verbal battle on the beach, perhaps with a few closing thoughts from the author on the sadness and might-have-been-ness of it all. But instead, there is an anticlimactic final chapter consisting of what sound like afterthoughts, hurriedly recounting Edward's meanderings over the next 40 years. Somewhat mystifyingly, McEwan does not mention Florence's personal life after the traumatic wedding night, although he has paid equal attention to both characters until this last chapter. He does, however, offer an oblique but important clue. In a recent review of "On Chesil Beach," Christopher Hitchens concludes dismissively--and erroneously--that "Florence, a classically trained violinist, devotes the remainder of her life to a rather spinsterish role in a string quartet." Not at all. In an admiring newspaper review of a triumphant performance by that string quartet at Wigmore Hall in Oxford, the fictional reviewer singles out the exceptional playing of the first violinist, who is Florence. "She is obviously in love," writes this critic (to the best of my recollection), "not only with the music and with Mozart, but with life itself." Surely McEwan is implying that Florence, unlike Edward, has ultimately found fulfillment and happiness.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
Could something please happen..., July 27, 2007
By
J. Mills "adventure seeker" (San Diego, CA United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: On Chesil Beach: A Novel (Hardcover) Although I felt that this book was well-written, my attention span was challenged. The book was long on detail and short on action. Simply, it was antclimactic...
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
Not My Cuppa, July 13, 2007
By
David Schweizer "Almawood" (Kansas, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: On Chesil Beach: A Novel (Hardcover) The author is dead on in his description of sexual frustration, I'll hand him that. One does indeed feel as though one knew these people, because what he is describing in the end is the fear of sexual contact. These days such experiences are rare, because by the time they are married, most people have been around the block. But fifty years ago in the world McEwan describes, sex came for the first time on honeymoon night. If the couple can be described as naive, it is only in this one area; otherwise they are sophisticated, if not jaded. The bride is having a hard time accepting French kissing, and fears she may vomit if he probes too deeply. He is afraid he may experience ecstasy before she's ready. This is described in excruciating detail. In fact, the details pile up until one is taking the bride's side: This sex business is an ordeal. The couple is a nervous wreck. The reader finds oneself wondering how the modern age ever was born with this sort of Victorian repression pressing so heavily. This all sounds very 19th century but the author is right to locate this so very late in the 20th century. We may never be free of it. These deeply disturbed individuals need help - not just sexual counseling but probing psychoanalysis and possibly shock treatment. In this sense the book is a revelation - what in God's name was done to these decent people in their childhood to make them so sick? We believe them to be permanently scarred. McEwan no doubt accomplishes what he set out to achieve, but I wonder if it was worth the trouble.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
Love means never having to say..., August 9, 2007
By
JoAnne Goldberg (Silicon Valley, CA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: On Chesil Beach: A Novel (Hardcover) I'm sorry, but what else can you say about a 22-year-old wife who ran away? And who took almost 200 pages to do so, leaving her drooling groom and an untold number of readers on a beach filled with literary quicksand, struggling to find a likeable character or a redeeming bit of plot? As I finished this book, I found myself humming "Where do I begin?" (the theme song from the movie version of Love Story). The similarities between that book and Chesil include length (both books barely squeak past 200 pages) and an ill-fated romance marked by different socioeconomic backgrounds and music. But Edward and Florence are no Oliver and Jenny, and anyone who sheds tears at the end of Chesil is probably mourning the loss of $22 (even the $13.20 amazon price seems steep.) I admire spare, chiseled prose, but McEwan's stiff, unyielding dialog feels wooden rather than trenchant. The book reads like a period piece, a stylized sitting room drama from the turn of the last century. Was Florence molested by her repulsive father? Possibly. But McEwan does his best to depict Edward as a pretty unappetizing boyfriend/husband. Was Edward's inability to sense his bride's emotional state a result of his growing up with a brain-damaged mother in a pigsty of a house? Does it matter? (I have to admit that the description of the mess was probably my favorite part of this otherwise unappealing book.) Though the story describes their courtship, the relationship has so little sizzle that it's hard to understand how the two of them managed to work up the energy to go through with a wedding. After dragging us through the beach spat (their first and only fight? and even that lacked spirit), McEwan decides to take the easy way out. So much for enduring love. While I can accept the premise for most of the book--the stilted, boring couple, the unpleasant parents, the wedding night jitters--a lifelong estrangement defies all experience and common sense. My impression was that McEwan was as tired of these colorless whiners as I was. Finally, the big question: how did this book ever get published? That's a rhetorical question, of course. If anyone else had written this book and managed to get it into the hands of a publisher, he would have been told "nice treatment--shows a lot of promise--bring it back when you're finished." But when you're Ian "Booker Prize" McEwan, editors may be a little too kind. As Ian himself might say, the result can be downright nauseous.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
'
9 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
The ickiness of intimacy, July 27, 2007
By
Julee Rudolf "book snob" (Oak Harbor, WA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: On Chesil Beach: A Novel (Hardcover) As the novella (miniscule font in a small dimensioned book) begins, Florence and Edward are "young [22 years old], educated, and both virgins," newlyweds on their wedding night contemplating the evening's objective: consummation. But considering his prenuptial preparation and nature--prone to making spontaneous relationship decisions in the throes of passion, hers--uptight in the ways of intimacy, what transpires is no surprise. The couple's progress is interrupted at opportune moments for flashbacks into their pasts: a bit on their upbringings, family members, meeting, and courtship. Alternate chapters cover the wedding night. Its final dozen pages fast-forward four decades beyond the honeymoon. On the night in question, she naively suffers from a failure to understand; he just plain misunderstands. Readers, sexually squeamish or not, may also suffer when reading the minutiae of their intimacy, which is, at times, just plain too much information. Better: The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
'
9 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
Clearly in the minority, June 18, 2007
By
Alexander G. Hoffman (Toronto) - See all my reviews
This review is from: On Chesil Beach: A Novel (Hardcover) I fully realize that as I am writing this, I am outnumbered 18-1 in the reviews of this book. Frankly, I absolutly loathed it. Florence and Edward don't, for a second, feel like actual human beings. I never saw any indication of why these two were "in love" or why they would ever have gotten to the point of being married. Edward is married to a woman who pretty much recoils at intimacy and who has made it clear she doesn't want his tongue in her mouth and yet while kissing her, seems to believe she is going to...well...take him in her mouth? Florence suggests, on her wedding night, that she and Edward would be fine as long as he goes out and makes love to other women? Any of this is realistic? The ending just caps it off. It sounds like a guy with a failed life, "talking an ex pretty" believing that it would have worked only "if". I never got the characters, never cared about them, certainly didn't see any reason they were together and just didn't enjoy it.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
Not to be compared to Atonement, March 31, 2008
By
anonymous "mrw" (CA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: On Chesil Beach: A Novel (Hardcover) This is a very short, very pointless novella in my opinion. It is in no way comparable to Atonement. The prose is in McEwan's usual excellent style, but I was left with the feeling, "Is that all?"
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Bittersweet tale, ultimately trite, December 18, 2008
By
Cecil Bothwell "Author of Pure Bunkum" (Asheville, NC USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: On Chesil Beach (Paperback) Ian McEwan set himself the writerly task of composing a novel whose entire action takes place in just a few hours and succeeded. However, along the way he failed to help the reader much care about the young couple whose lives turn on a dime on their honeymoon night. The characters are so two-dimensional that their cataclysm fails the believability test. No one THAT much in love could behave THAT stupidly. McEwan is handy with a phrase, however vacuous the result. If you are fond of TV drama, this may just be your ticket, but life is short and there are more good books to read than you will ever have time to open.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Not as good as his previous works, July 14, 2008
By
Barbara Johnson "Avid Reader" (Baker City, OR USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: On Chesil Beach (Paperback) I have enjoyed this author for years, but Chesil Beach didn't live up to his previous works.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Ian McEwan
Ian McEwan: I despise militant Islam
By Nicole Martin, Digital and Media Correspondent
Last Updated: 1:16PM BST 22/06/2008
The award-winning novelist Ian McEwan has launched an outspoken attack on militant Islam, accusing it of "wanting to create a society that I detest".
Ian McEwan has been criticised by the Muslim Council of Britain
The author said he "despises Islamism" because of its views on women and homosexuality.
But predicting a backlash against his comments, which were made in an Italian newspaper, he insisted he was not a racist.
The writer of Atonement and Enduring Love condemned religious hardliners as he defended his friend, the writer Martin Amis, against charges of racism.
Article continues
advertisement
Amis was accused last year of being Islamaphobic after he said that "the Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order".
In an essay written the day before the fifth anniversary of the bombing of New York's Twin Towers, the novelist suggested "strip-searching people who look like they're from the Middle East or from Pakistan", preventing Muslims from travelling, and further down the road, deportation.
In The Age of Horrorism, Amis argued that fundamentalists had won the battle between Islam and Islamism.
McEwan, 60, said it was "logically absurd and morally unacceptable" that writers who speak out against militant Islam are immediately branded racist.
"As soon as a writer expresses an opinion against Islamism, immediately someone on the left leaps to his feet and claims that because the majority of Muslims are dark-skinned, he who criticises it is racist," he said in an interview in Corriere della Sera.
"This is logically absurd and morally unacceptable. Martin is not a racist. And I myself despise Islamism, because it wants to create a society that I detest, based on religious belief, on a text, on lack of freedom for women, intolerance towards homosexuality and so on - we know it well."
McEwan recognised that similar views were held by some Christian hardliners in America.
"I find them equally absurd," he said. "I don't like these medieval visions of the world according to which God is coming to save the faithful and to damn the others. But those American Christians don't want to kill anyone in my city, that's the difference."
Inayat Bunglawala, a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain, criticised McEwan's defence of Amis.
"Mr McEwan is being rather disingenuous about his friend, Martin Amis's remarks. Of course you should be allowed to criticise the tenets of any religion. However, Amis went much further than that," he said.
"He was advocating that the Muslim community be made to suffer 'until it gets its own house in order'. And what sort of suffering did Amis have in mind? In his own words, 'Not letting them travel. Deportation - further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they're from the Middle East or from Pakistan ... Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children.'"
He added: "Those were clearly very bigoted remarks and the fact that McEwan prefers to whitewash them tells us much about his own views too."
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
The "Complete" review ~ Atonement
The complete review's Review:
The first half of Atonement -- the long first part of the book -- is set in 1935, at the Tallis home in the English countryside. It begins with Briony Tallis, a bright but still very childish thirteen year-old, preparing a play, The Trials of Arabella. Briony seems a budding dramatist, enjoying this staging of events and putting words into people's mouths, but the events of just those days will change her from potential playwright to novelist, a very different kind of fabulist. A great deal goes on in the brief time covered in this first part of the book, but most of it is relatively mundane stuff. The highlight is meant to be the return of Briony's brother, Leon, from school; it is to impress him that Briony writes her play. McEwan slowly sets the stage and introduces the players -- also more dramatist than novelist at the beginning. The house is fairly full -- though, in the terrible heat, not exactly bustling with activity. There is another sibling: Briony's considerably older sister, Cecilia. The parents are weak presences: the mother, Emily, isn't a very strong woman and the father is almost entirely absent (away working in London). Other figures of note include Robbie Turner, the housekeeper's son who shows great promise and whose education has been paid for by the Tallises. He and Cecilia both attended Cambridge at the same time, and while they didn't associate much there they suddenly find themselves closer than expected back home. Then there are the cousins -- nine-year-old twin boys and the fifteen-year-old Lola. Their parents have split up and the children have just been sent here, where Briony immediately ropes them into participating in her play. Lola, adept at some manipulation, turns out to be a bit much for Briony to try to control -- but Briony seems to manage to twist most situations to her satisfaction. Then there's the wealthy industrialist, slick Paul Marshall, also staying over ..... McEwan takes his time, allowing the story to unfold. There are ominous signs and small warnings all along. There are accidents -- a child wetting the bed, a chipped vase -- and then things seen and overheard and possibly misinterpreted (and possibly missed). There are more dramatic slips -- Robbie pens two letters and has Briony deliver the wrong one. It becomes ever clearer: something bad is bound to happen, something terrible, even. Briony is at the centre of most of it. The novel wanders farther afield, focussing on others, too, but Briony is the key. She alone might have been able to change the course of events. McEwan makes it clear: there were opportunities:
She could have gone in to her mother then and snuggled close beside her and begun a résumé of the day. If she had she would not have committed her crime. So much would not have happened, nothing would have happened, and the smoothing hand of time would have made the eveing barely memorable But throughout there is also always a sense of inevitability to the story. Briony does do something very, very bad -- but the true crime (and there is one) is committed by another. It's one of the few weaknesses in the book (though in a book of such strength weakness too is relative, and it is not that much of a blemish): the evil-doer is too strongly depicted as such, the character's villainy too obvious, even the deed itself foreshadowed in almost every detail (there was no doubt what the crime would be, or who the victim). The suspense, however, is in Briony's crime -- to see what her betrayal will be, and how McEwan will manage it. It is a horrible betrayal, ruining two lives. It comes almost exactly halfway through the book -- a long buildup just for this, but at no point does McEwan disappoint along the way. The reader has been prepared for it, and it is still shocking and wrenching -- a neat, tragic climax smack in the centre of the novel. The first part of the novel ends with Briony's crime -- allowing for only a few bits of the consequences to unfold. What really happens in the hours and days and months and even years after isn't made immediately clear. The second part of the novel jumps ahead a few years, focussing on Robbie Turner, now soldiering in France -- in fact, fleeing from the oncoming Germans. It's a complete change of pace and scene -- and story. It might be a bit too much -- McEwan showing he can write war-scenes, while the reader constantly wants to know: but what of all the others. But McEwan sticks with Robbie, allowing only a few more details to come out that reveal what transpired in the intervening years, and ultimately that too works. The third part focusses on Briony, studying to become a nurse in wartime London -- the same job her estranged sister, Cecilia, has. Briony is also still writing, and at one point sends a manuscript to Cyril Connolly at Horizon -- receiving an encouraging rejection letter. McEwan presents the entire three-page letter, and from Connolly's comments it becomes clear that Briony submitted what amounts to a first draft of the first part of Atonement (reading slightly differently now in part because some of Connolly's suggestions have been incorporated into it) ...... It dawns on readers: Briony's atonement is not her forsaking Cambridge to become a nurse, or trying to be forgiven by those she wronged, but rather it is the writing of this novel. This is confirmed, soon enough. The book closes with a short last section set in the present, in London, 1999 -- a final summing up. There appear to have been readers who were disappointed by what has been perceived as an unfair final authorial twist here. Briony even anticipates them:
I know there's always a certain kind of reader who will be compelled to ask, But what really happened ? "The answer is simple", McEwan has Briony write -- and it is. McEwan shows here, with a crystal clarity that few novelists have achieved in recent times: fiction triumphs. The author decides what "really happened". That's always the case. That is what fiction is. And here, for once, the author has presented his decision in a near-perfect manner -- in particular because he shows so well how this particular reality (or un-reality) came about (and leaves the inevitable lingering questions of what can be believed, of what is truth and what is wishful thinking and what pure invention). Questions remain -- but McEwan makes a convincing case for their needing to remain, and for readers needing to confront them. Trust us: neat endings, tied up with a bow, aren't nearly as satisfying as what McEwan has to offer. Fiction doesn't offer certainty, or absolute answers. It is nothing like factual, literal truth. But McEwan here shows why this fiction-truth is better, and what amazing power fiction has It hardly plays a major role until near the end, but Atonement is a convincing example of why authors write novels -- indeed, of how (and why) we all create our own realities (be they in book form, or merely mind-games that allow us to bear the enormity that is life itself). Both Briony-as-author and, much more significantly, McEwan-as-author make a very impressive case for the continued role and need for the novel. And Atonement is a also a very good novel even without these writerly concerns. The first part is exceptional, a large cast of characters and many events adeptly interwoven, all culminating in a terrible but understandable betrayal. The other parts, too, are very well done -- the horrors of war, the scenes of the wounded, and the lives of Briony, Cecilia, and Robbie. A marvelous read, highly recommended.
- Return to top of the page -
Links: Atonement:
Random House publicity page
Profile in The Observer
Interview in the San Francisco Chronicle Reviews:
BBC
Blogcritics.org
The Book Blog
BookPage
Bookreporter.com
BooksILoved.com
BR-online (German)
Brigitte (German)
Buchkritik.at (German)
carpe librum (German)
The Center for Nursing Advocacy
Christian Science Monitor
CritiquesLibres.com (French)
culturevulture.net
Entertainment Weekly
L'Express (French)
Falter (German)
fictions
Brian Finney
Free Williamsburg
Freitag (German)
girlfriendbooks.com
Good Books Lately
goodreports.net
The Guardian
A Guy's Moleskine Notebook
Anne Hanik (German)
Indian Express
Jowebzine (French)
Jungle World (German)
Leselust (German)
Tom Liehr (German)
Lire (French)
London Review of Books
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
My Favourite Book
My Spiritual Journey
Neue Szene (German)
New York
The New York Times
The New York Times Book Review
The Observer
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Christopher Priest
Rhein Zeitung (German)
Salon
San Francisco Chronicle
satt.org (German)
Sitartmag (French)
Steep Stairs
Sunday Times
taz (German)
James Tata
3M's Reviews
titel (German)
The Washington Post
Women's Day
Steven Wu's Book Reviews
Yale Review of Books
Die Zeit (German) Atonement - the film:
Official site
IMDb page Ian McEwan:
The Official Website of Ian McEwan
Ian McEwan at Contemporary Writers
Ian McEwan at BooksUnlimited Other books by Ian McEwan under review:
Amsterdam
On Chesil Beach
Saturday Other books of interest under review:
See the index of Contemporary British fiction at the complete review
- Return to top of the page -
About the Author:
British author Ian McEwan is the author of many fine novels. He won the Booker Prize for Amsterdam in 1998.
- Return to top of the page -
© 2002-2007 the complete review Main the New the Best the Rest Review Index Links
The first half of Atonement -- the long first part of the book -- is set in 1935, at the Tallis home in the English countryside. It begins with Briony Tallis, a bright but still very childish thirteen year-old, preparing a play, The Trials of Arabella. Briony seems a budding dramatist, enjoying this staging of events and putting words into people's mouths, but the events of just those days will change her from potential playwright to novelist, a very different kind of fabulist. A great deal goes on in the brief time covered in this first part of the book, but most of it is relatively mundane stuff. The highlight is meant to be the return of Briony's brother, Leon, from school; it is to impress him that Briony writes her play. McEwan slowly sets the stage and introduces the players -- also more dramatist than novelist at the beginning. The house is fairly full -- though, in the terrible heat, not exactly bustling with activity. There is another sibling: Briony's considerably older sister, Cecilia. The parents are weak presences: the mother, Emily, isn't a very strong woman and the father is almost entirely absent (away working in London). Other figures of note include Robbie Turner, the housekeeper's son who shows great promise and whose education has been paid for by the Tallises. He and Cecilia both attended Cambridge at the same time, and while they didn't associate much there they suddenly find themselves closer than expected back home. Then there are the cousins -- nine-year-old twin boys and the fifteen-year-old Lola. Their parents have split up and the children have just been sent here, where Briony immediately ropes them into participating in her play. Lola, adept at some manipulation, turns out to be a bit much for Briony to try to control -- but Briony seems to manage to twist most situations to her satisfaction. Then there's the wealthy industrialist, slick Paul Marshall, also staying over ..... McEwan takes his time, allowing the story to unfold. There are ominous signs and small warnings all along. There are accidents -- a child wetting the bed, a chipped vase -- and then things seen and overheard and possibly misinterpreted (and possibly missed). There are more dramatic slips -- Robbie pens two letters and has Briony deliver the wrong one. It becomes ever clearer: something bad is bound to happen, something terrible, even. Briony is at the centre of most of it. The novel wanders farther afield, focussing on others, too, but Briony is the key. She alone might have been able to change the course of events. McEwan makes it clear: there were opportunities:
She could have gone in to her mother then and snuggled close beside her and begun a résumé of the day. If she had she would not have committed her crime. So much would not have happened, nothing would have happened, and the smoothing hand of time would have made the eveing barely memorable But throughout there is also always a sense of inevitability to the story. Briony does do something very, very bad -- but the true crime (and there is one) is committed by another. It's one of the few weaknesses in the book (though in a book of such strength weakness too is relative, and it is not that much of a blemish): the evil-doer is too strongly depicted as such, the character's villainy too obvious, even the deed itself foreshadowed in almost every detail (there was no doubt what the crime would be, or who the victim). The suspense, however, is in Briony's crime -- to see what her betrayal will be, and how McEwan will manage it. It is a horrible betrayal, ruining two lives. It comes almost exactly halfway through the book -- a long buildup just for this, but at no point does McEwan disappoint along the way. The reader has been prepared for it, and it is still shocking and wrenching -- a neat, tragic climax smack in the centre of the novel. The first part of the novel ends with Briony's crime -- allowing for only a few bits of the consequences to unfold. What really happens in the hours and days and months and even years after isn't made immediately clear. The second part of the novel jumps ahead a few years, focussing on Robbie Turner, now soldiering in France -- in fact, fleeing from the oncoming Germans. It's a complete change of pace and scene -- and story. It might be a bit too much -- McEwan showing he can write war-scenes, while the reader constantly wants to know: but what of all the others. But McEwan sticks with Robbie, allowing only a few more details to come out that reveal what transpired in the intervening years, and ultimately that too works. The third part focusses on Briony, studying to become a nurse in wartime London -- the same job her estranged sister, Cecilia, has. Briony is also still writing, and at one point sends a manuscript to Cyril Connolly at Horizon -- receiving an encouraging rejection letter. McEwan presents the entire three-page letter, and from Connolly's comments it becomes clear that Briony submitted what amounts to a first draft of the first part of Atonement (reading slightly differently now in part because some of Connolly's suggestions have been incorporated into it) ...... It dawns on readers: Briony's atonement is not her forsaking Cambridge to become a nurse, or trying to be forgiven by those she wronged, but rather it is the writing of this novel. This is confirmed, soon enough. The book closes with a short last section set in the present, in London, 1999 -- a final summing up. There appear to have been readers who were disappointed by what has been perceived as an unfair final authorial twist here. Briony even anticipates them:
I know there's always a certain kind of reader who will be compelled to ask, But what really happened ? "The answer is simple", McEwan has Briony write -- and it is. McEwan shows here, with a crystal clarity that few novelists have achieved in recent times: fiction triumphs. The author decides what "really happened". That's always the case. That is what fiction is. And here, for once, the author has presented his decision in a near-perfect manner -- in particular because he shows so well how this particular reality (or un-reality) came about (and leaves the inevitable lingering questions of what can be believed, of what is truth and what is wishful thinking and what pure invention). Questions remain -- but McEwan makes a convincing case for their needing to remain, and for readers needing to confront them. Trust us: neat endings, tied up with a bow, aren't nearly as satisfying as what McEwan has to offer. Fiction doesn't offer certainty, or absolute answers. It is nothing like factual, literal truth. But McEwan here shows why this fiction-truth is better, and what amazing power fiction has It hardly plays a major role until near the end, but Atonement is a convincing example of why authors write novels -- indeed, of how (and why) we all create our own realities (be they in book form, or merely mind-games that allow us to bear the enormity that is life itself). Both Briony-as-author and, much more significantly, McEwan-as-author make a very impressive case for the continued role and need for the novel. And Atonement is a also a very good novel even without these writerly concerns. The first part is exceptional, a large cast of characters and many events adeptly interwoven, all culminating in a terrible but understandable betrayal. The other parts, too, are very well done -- the horrors of war, the scenes of the wounded, and the lives of Briony, Cecilia, and Robbie. A marvelous read, highly recommended.
- Return to top of the page -
Links: Atonement:
Random House publicity page
Profile in The Observer
Interview in the San Francisco Chronicle Reviews:
BBC
Blogcritics.org
The Book Blog
BookPage
Bookreporter.com
BooksILoved.com
BR-online (German)
Brigitte (German)
Buchkritik.at (German)
carpe librum (German)
The Center for Nursing Advocacy
Christian Science Monitor
CritiquesLibres.com (French)
culturevulture.net
Entertainment Weekly
L'Express (French)
Falter (German)
fictions
Brian Finney
Free Williamsburg
Freitag (German)
girlfriendbooks.com
Good Books Lately
goodreports.net
The Guardian
A Guy's Moleskine Notebook
Anne Hanik (German)
Indian Express
Jowebzine (French)
Jungle World (German)
Leselust (German)
Tom Liehr (German)
Lire (French)
London Review of Books
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
My Favourite Book
My Spiritual Journey
Neue Szene (German)
New York
The New York Times
The New York Times Book Review
The Observer
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Christopher Priest
Rhein Zeitung (German)
Salon
San Francisco Chronicle
satt.org (German)
Sitartmag (French)
Steep Stairs
Sunday Times
taz (German)
James Tata
3M's Reviews
titel (German)
The Washington Post
Women's Day
Steven Wu's Book Reviews
Yale Review of Books
Die Zeit (German) Atonement - the film:
Official site
IMDb page Ian McEwan:
The Official Website of Ian McEwan
Ian McEwan at Contemporary Writers
Ian McEwan at BooksUnlimited Other books by Ian McEwan under review:
Amsterdam
On Chesil Beach
Saturday Other books of interest under review:
See the index of Contemporary British fiction at the complete review
- Return to top of the page -
About the Author:
British author Ian McEwan is the author of many fine novels. He won the Booker Prize for Amsterdam in 1998.
- Return to top of the page -
© 2002-2007 the complete review Main the New the Best the Rest Review Index Links
Guardian Review.....Atonement.......
In his latest book Atonement Ian McEwan brings the British novel into the 21st century, says Geoff Dyer Saturday September 22, 2001The Guardian
Atonement Ian McEwanJonathan Cape£16.99
The twists and turns of Ian McEwan's fiction are built on a knack for sustained illusion. When he writes "a glass of beer" we do not just see it; we are willing to drink from it vicariously. The ballooning accident (imaginatively derived from footage of an actual incident) that opens Enduring Love is a spectacular example, but the ability to make the invented seem real animates every page of his work.
The novels' psychological acuity derives, always, from their fidelity to a precisely delineated reality. Needless to say, the more disturbing or skewed that reality (in the early stories and novels, most obviously), the more finely McEwan attunes his readers to it. Moral ambiguity and doubt are thereby enhanced - rather than resolved - by clarity of presentation. This is why the themes of the novels (with the exception of the enjoyably forgettable Amsterdam ) linger and resonate beyond the impeccable neatness of their arrangement. McEwan is, in other words, a thoroughly traditional original.
Atonement does not feel, at first, like a book by McEwan. The opening is almost perversely ungripping. Instead of the expected sharpness of focus, the first 70 or so pages are a lengthy summary of shifting impressions. One longs for a cinematic clarity and concentration of dialogue and action, but such interludes dissolve before our - and the participants' - eyes.
Unlike Martin Amis, say, or Salman Rushdie, McEwan is an invisible rather than a flamboyant stylist. Even so, the pallid qualifiers and disposable adverbs (a "gently rocking" sheet of water, the "coyly drooping" head of a nettle) come as a surprise. The language used to distil the scene - a gathering of the Tallis family at their country house on a sweltering day in 1935 - serves also as a wash that partially obscures it.
Various characters come and go but the novel, at this point, seems populated mainly by its literary influences. Chief among these is Virginia Woolf. The technique is not stream of consciousness so much as "a slow drift of association", "the hovering stillness of nothing much seeming to happen". The book later contains a critique of its own early pages - or at least of the draft from which they derive - in the guise of a letter from Cyril Connolly, editor of Horizon , who advises that "such writing can become precious when there is no sense of forward movement". The requisite propulsion is provided by the unexpected intrusion, as it were, of two other novelists from the interwar years.
Cecilia, the eldest daughter of the family in whose house we are imaginatively lodged, was at Cambridge with Robbie, the son of the Tallises' cleaning lady, whose education was funded by Cecilia's father. They become aware, on this sultry day, of some kind of current - animosity? irreconcilable attraction? - passing between them. Robbie tries to articulate this in a letter, at the bottom of which he scribbles the naked truth: "In my dreams I kiss your cunt." He discards that draft and intends to send another, blander one but, in keeping with Freud's analysis of such slips, accidentally sends the shocking letter to Cecilia via her adolescent sister, Briony, who opens and reads it.
The consequences of the go-between blundering in like this are liberating and incriminating in unequal measure. What Lawrence called the "dirty little secret" of sex besmirches the Tallises' world, or - as Lawrence insisted - reveals how besmirched that world really is. It is as if Mellors from Lady Chatterley's Lover has gatecrashed the exquisitely rendered world of Mrs Dalloway . Or as if the contents of McEwan's stories had been explicitly daubed on the walls of Brideshead.
Another crisis soon follows, this one imported from EM Forster's India. Cecilia's young cousin, Lola, is sexually assaulted in the grounds of the house. Lola does not know by whom, but Briony - an aspiring writer - compounds her earlier transgression by convincing her and everyone else (except Cecilia) that Robbie is the culprit. Unlike the incident in the Marabar caves, this one does not end in a retraction and Robbie, the proletarian interloper, is convicted.
In the second section of the novel, the pastel haze of the first part gives way to an acrid, graphic account of Robbie's later experiences in the British rout at Dunkirk. McEwan is here playing more obviously to his strengths. The highly decorated novelist deploys his research in an effective if familiar pattern of narrative manoeuvres. Refracted through Robbie's exhausted, wounded view of history in the making, the retreat unfolds in a series of vividly realised details and encounters. In the atrocious context of battle, Briony's apparently motiveless crime is rendered almost insignificant. "But what was guilt these days? It was cheap. Everyone was guilty, and no one was."
In similar fashion, the partial democratisation of Britain that results from the social upheaval of war is prefigured by Cecilia's turning her back on her family and allying herself with Robbie, the working-class graduate (whose smouldering sense of grievance and displacement would be vehemently embodied on the postwar stage by Jimmy Porter).
Part three shifts back to London, where Briony is training as a nurse, struggling to cope with the influx of casualties from Dunkirk. McEwan's command of visceral shock is here anchored in a historical setting thoroughly authenticated by his archival imagination. The elliptical style of the opening part has no place in these pages, as the graphic horrors of injury, mutilation and death pile up before Briony's eyes. She loosens the bandage around a patient's head and his brain threatens to slop out into her hands. Does this devotion to the victims of war wash her hands of her earlier guilt? Does her atonement depend on Robbie's survival? Or can it be achieved through the eventual realisation of her literary ambitions - through a novel such as the one we are reading? Who can grant atonement to the novelist, whose God-like capacity to create and rework the world means that there is no higher authority to whom appeal can be made?
It is a tribute to the scope, ambition and complexity of Atonement that it is difficult to give an adequate sense of what is going on in the novel without preempting - and thereby diminishing - the reader's experience of it. Suffice to say, any initial hesitancy about style - any fear that, for once, McEwan may not be not in control of his material -all play their part in his larger purpose.
On the one hand, McEwan seems to be retrospectively inserting his name into the pantheon of British novelists of the 1930s and 1940s. But he is also, of course, doing more than this, demonstrating and exploring what the mature Briony comes to see as a larger "transformation... being worked in human nature itself". The novels of Woolf and Lawrence did not just record this transformation; they were instrumental in bringing it about. McEwan uses his novel to show how this subjective or interior transformation can now be seen to have interacted with the larger march of 20th- century history.
While John Fowles was working on The French Lieutenant's Woman, he reminded himself that this was not a book that one of the Victorian novelists forgot to write but, perhaps, one that they had failed to write. A similar impulse underwrites Atonement. It is less about a novelist harking nostalgically back to the consoling uncertainties of the past than it is about creatively extending and hauling a defining part of the British literary tradition up to and into the 21st century.
Atonement Ian McEwanJonathan Cape£16.99
The twists and turns of Ian McEwan's fiction are built on a knack for sustained illusion. When he writes "a glass of beer" we do not just see it; we are willing to drink from it vicariously. The ballooning accident (imaginatively derived from footage of an actual incident) that opens Enduring Love is a spectacular example, but the ability to make the invented seem real animates every page of his work.
The novels' psychological acuity derives, always, from their fidelity to a precisely delineated reality. Needless to say, the more disturbing or skewed that reality (in the early stories and novels, most obviously), the more finely McEwan attunes his readers to it. Moral ambiguity and doubt are thereby enhanced - rather than resolved - by clarity of presentation. This is why the themes of the novels (with the exception of the enjoyably forgettable Amsterdam ) linger and resonate beyond the impeccable neatness of their arrangement. McEwan is, in other words, a thoroughly traditional original.
Atonement does not feel, at first, like a book by McEwan. The opening is almost perversely ungripping. Instead of the expected sharpness of focus, the first 70 or so pages are a lengthy summary of shifting impressions. One longs for a cinematic clarity and concentration of dialogue and action, but such interludes dissolve before our - and the participants' - eyes.
Unlike Martin Amis, say, or Salman Rushdie, McEwan is an invisible rather than a flamboyant stylist. Even so, the pallid qualifiers and disposable adverbs (a "gently rocking" sheet of water, the "coyly drooping" head of a nettle) come as a surprise. The language used to distil the scene - a gathering of the Tallis family at their country house on a sweltering day in 1935 - serves also as a wash that partially obscures it.
Various characters come and go but the novel, at this point, seems populated mainly by its literary influences. Chief among these is Virginia Woolf. The technique is not stream of consciousness so much as "a slow drift of association", "the hovering stillness of nothing much seeming to happen". The book later contains a critique of its own early pages - or at least of the draft from which they derive - in the guise of a letter from Cyril Connolly, editor of Horizon , who advises that "such writing can become precious when there is no sense of forward movement". The requisite propulsion is provided by the unexpected intrusion, as it were, of two other novelists from the interwar years.
Cecilia, the eldest daughter of the family in whose house we are imaginatively lodged, was at Cambridge with Robbie, the son of the Tallises' cleaning lady, whose education was funded by Cecilia's father. They become aware, on this sultry day, of some kind of current - animosity? irreconcilable attraction? - passing between them. Robbie tries to articulate this in a letter, at the bottom of which he scribbles the naked truth: "In my dreams I kiss your cunt." He discards that draft and intends to send another, blander one but, in keeping with Freud's analysis of such slips, accidentally sends the shocking letter to Cecilia via her adolescent sister, Briony, who opens and reads it.
The consequences of the go-between blundering in like this are liberating and incriminating in unequal measure. What Lawrence called the "dirty little secret" of sex besmirches the Tallises' world, or - as Lawrence insisted - reveals how besmirched that world really is. It is as if Mellors from Lady Chatterley's Lover has gatecrashed the exquisitely rendered world of Mrs Dalloway . Or as if the contents of McEwan's stories had been explicitly daubed on the walls of Brideshead.
Another crisis soon follows, this one imported from EM Forster's India. Cecilia's young cousin, Lola, is sexually assaulted in the grounds of the house. Lola does not know by whom, but Briony - an aspiring writer - compounds her earlier transgression by convincing her and everyone else (except Cecilia) that Robbie is the culprit. Unlike the incident in the Marabar caves, this one does not end in a retraction and Robbie, the proletarian interloper, is convicted.
In the second section of the novel, the pastel haze of the first part gives way to an acrid, graphic account of Robbie's later experiences in the British rout at Dunkirk. McEwan is here playing more obviously to his strengths. The highly decorated novelist deploys his research in an effective if familiar pattern of narrative manoeuvres. Refracted through Robbie's exhausted, wounded view of history in the making, the retreat unfolds in a series of vividly realised details and encounters. In the atrocious context of battle, Briony's apparently motiveless crime is rendered almost insignificant. "But what was guilt these days? It was cheap. Everyone was guilty, and no one was."
In similar fashion, the partial democratisation of Britain that results from the social upheaval of war is prefigured by Cecilia's turning her back on her family and allying herself with Robbie, the working-class graduate (whose smouldering sense of grievance and displacement would be vehemently embodied on the postwar stage by Jimmy Porter).
Part three shifts back to London, where Briony is training as a nurse, struggling to cope with the influx of casualties from Dunkirk. McEwan's command of visceral shock is here anchored in a historical setting thoroughly authenticated by his archival imagination. The elliptical style of the opening part has no place in these pages, as the graphic horrors of injury, mutilation and death pile up before Briony's eyes. She loosens the bandage around a patient's head and his brain threatens to slop out into her hands. Does this devotion to the victims of war wash her hands of her earlier guilt? Does her atonement depend on Robbie's survival? Or can it be achieved through the eventual realisation of her literary ambitions - through a novel such as the one we are reading? Who can grant atonement to the novelist, whose God-like capacity to create and rework the world means that there is no higher authority to whom appeal can be made?
It is a tribute to the scope, ambition and complexity of Atonement that it is difficult to give an adequate sense of what is going on in the novel without preempting - and thereby diminishing - the reader's experience of it. Suffice to say, any initial hesitancy about style - any fear that, for once, McEwan may not be not in control of his material -all play their part in his larger purpose.
On the one hand, McEwan seems to be retrospectively inserting his name into the pantheon of British novelists of the 1930s and 1940s. But he is also, of course, doing more than this, demonstrating and exploring what the mature Briony comes to see as a larger "transformation... being worked in human nature itself". The novels of Woolf and Lawrence did not just record this transformation; they were instrumental in bringing it about. McEwan uses his novel to show how this subjective or interior transformation can now be seen to have interacted with the larger march of 20th- century history.
While John Fowles was working on The French Lieutenant's Woman, he reminded himself that this was not a book that one of the Victorian novelists forgot to write but, perhaps, one that they had failed to write. A similar impulse underwrites Atonement. It is less about a novelist harking nostalgically back to the consoling uncertainties of the past than it is about creatively extending and hauling a defining part of the British literary tradition up to and into the 21st century.
Atonement......Next Book club choice......
Our next discussion is on the book "Atonement"....................by Ian McEwan.
I'm not a real fan of this guy.....found "Saturday" a turn-off!! But I'm willing to give it a try. I suppose the film was OK.
I'm not a real fan of this guy.....found "Saturday" a turn-off!! But I'm willing to give it a try. I suppose the film was OK.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)