Book Review: On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan

Every year Literary Review, a London journal, hands out its infamous “Bad Sex” award. This dubious honor highlights bad writing about (mostly) good sex. But if an award were given for good writing about (mostly) bad sex, Ian McEwan would win it hands down for his latest effort On Chesil Beach.

McEwan has merely dabbled in erotic writing before. The library scene in Atonement may have been steamy, but it was the shortest coupling in English fiction since the wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am episode in The French Lieutenant’s Woman. In McEwan’s last novel, Saturday, a young woman in London undresses, but merely to recite a Matthew Arnold poem. (Ah, life must be different across the Big Pond!) But now McEwan devotes an entire novel to a honeymoon night gone terribly astray.

An interesting conceit underpins McEwan’s tale. He sets his novel in the period immediately before the sexual revolution. On a summer evening in 1962 two newlyweds, Edward and Florence, finish their awkward dinner at a hotel on the Dorset coast, and anticipate the first night of their honeymoon with mixed emotions. Both are virgins, and each has reasons for anxiety.

Edward is shy, inexperienced and nervous about his ignorance of amatory matters. He worries about his self-control and the risk of, in his words, “arriving too soon.” But at least Edward has a fair amount of enthusiasm for the night ahead, which is more than one can say for his spouse. Florence views the approaching event with fear and repulsion. Her only source of guidance is a handbook, whose illustrations, cheery tone and exclamation points serve merely to sharpen her apprehension.

McEwan takes this simple set-up, and works wonders with it. Over the course of almost two hundred pages, he charts the ebb and flow of the couple’s wedding night with extraordinary deftness. He avoids all the pitfalls inherent in this story, which could easily lapse into cheap irony or crude comedy, and instead crafts a story rich in psychological insight and deep compassion for his characters – compassion that the reader comes to share.

Article Author: Ted Gioia

Ted Gioia is a writer and musician. He is the author of Delta Blues, The History of Jazz and, most recently, The Birth (and Death) of the Cool. You can follow Ted Gioia on Twitter at www.twitter.com/tedgioia.

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