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15 November 2007

On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan

Thankfully, Ian McEwan appears to have resurrected himself from the posturing and artifice of SATURDAY. Set in the Sixties in still stiff England, when lust and anger were barely acknowledged, let alone allowed full and free expression, his most recent work, ON CHESIL BEACH, traces the first night spent between newly weds Florence and Edward in a hotel on the Dorset coast. Fear and restraint, revulsion and desire play in almost wordless counterpoint as the two virgins negotiate their wedding night: silences betray more than people’s chatter. What makes this novella particularly disturbing is that, try as you might to maintain a readerly distance, you can’t simply linger in the role of listener or voyeur; you are forcefully, and somewhat insidiously, sucked in to become part of the (in)action. And, remarkably, this is wrought in a dispassionate and acutely crafted manner--high McEwan style, as it were.

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