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It is July 1962. Florence is a talented musician who dreams of a career on the concert stage and of the perfect life she will create with Edward, an earnest young history student at the University College in London, who unexpectedly wooed and won her heart. Newly married that morning, both virgins, Edward and Florence arrive at a hotel on the Dorset coast. At dinner in their rooms they struggle to suppress their worries about the wedding night to come. Edward, eager for rapture, frets over Florence's response to his advances and nurses a private fear of failure, while Florence's anxieties run deeper: she is overcome by sheer disgust at the idea of physical contact, but dreads disappointing her husband when they finally lie down together in the honeymoon suite.

Ian McEwan has caught with understanding and compassion the innocence of Edward and Florence at a time when marriage was presumed to be the outward sign of maturity and independence. On Chesil Beach is another masterwork from McEwan -- a story of lives transformed by a gesture not made or a word not spoken.

For my first bite at the McEwan apple, I was quite impressed. On Chesil Beach was beautifully written and I loved what he wrote...for the most part. I feel the book is best talked about in two parts: 1) the wedding day 2) the rest of the book.

In that first part, the wedding day, we have a man and woman who are as awkward with each other as they are in love. They fumble through conversation before fumbling at each other's clothing. They have never had difficulty communicating, but there is one glaring oversight in their conversational past: he could not wait to get into bed with her and she did not want to ever get into bed with him. The chapters that chronicle that day were rife with sexual tension and apprehension, and they were often pretty descriptive.

(I can accept that Americans are typically considered prude by the rest of the world, and if you have ever been uncomfortable by adult situations and bizarrely literary sexual euphemism in text you may have to skip over a few paragraphs.)

To characterize the second part of the book, that which did not occur on the couple's wedding day, I would consider it beautiful in its simplicity and innocence. The care with which McEwan handled their relationship as it budded through the soil was perfectly gentle. I really enjoyed how much of the story revolved around both Edward and Florence's families. Their separate family dynamics showed how they found solice in each other's company; they were each other's escape into a new-found reality.

On Chesil Beach was wonderfully tragic, if tragedy can be wonderful; (a little) funny; and all-around superbly written. Ian McEwan has been a celebrated author for many years and if On Chesil Beach is representative of his earlier work it is not difficult to see why he has received such praise.

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