But it is never easy.įlorence and Edward arrive at a hotel in Dorset, England in 1962. 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.

I love this book and have given it as a gift on occasion.

I believe it is a testament, ultimately, to the power of words, spoken and unspoken. On Chesil Beach, in 203 small pages, this tiny book deconstructs the first twenty-four hours of a marriage and traces the consequences of a great misunderstanding in the honeymoon bed. He of Atonement, Saturday, Amsterdam. And On Chesil Beach. He added in the interview: “Six years later they would be rolling a joint, exulting in a sense of youth as blessed state.If there is a master of the novel in this 21st Century, by my reckoning it is McEwan. “They lived in a time when a conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible,” the author says of his characters in the opening sentence. He wanted to explore the early 1960s, a period under-represented in literature just before social and sexual revolution changed the way young people thought and behaved. “It’s tough, though, because you are being accused of dishonesty.”įor now, at least, McEwan is basking in critical praise for “On Chesil Beach”, a novel about a young couple in 1962 who struggle to break the shackles of social convention as they negotiate the awkwardness of their wedding night. “When you’ve got medical procedures that are 60 years old, and especially when you are talking about soldiers damaged by war, you’ve got to get first person accounts,” he said. McEwan rejects suggestions that he plagiarised the work of Lucilla Andrews when he wrote “Atonement”, but conceded that he used her accounts of a hospital during World War Two. Sharp revealed his secret to the press in January. In 2002, McEwan discovered that his brother, whose adopted name was David Sharp, was given away in 1942 when only a few weeks old. “It will spew you out having chomped on you a bit.” It’s that restlessness of the press which on the one hand can be bewildering, but is also the thing that saves you because the monster needs to be fed. The world sort of shrinks, but it doesn’t last for long. The author of acclaimed works “Atonement” and “Amsterdam” said he felt uncomfortable in the media limelight. “I feel a period of obscurity would be very good for me,” McEwan told Reuters in an interview. In November, he was forced to deny suggestions he plagiarised someone else’s work, and two months later it was revealed that he had a long-lost brother who was abandoned as an infant by his mother after being born out of wedlock. Writer Ian McEwan poses during a photo call at the Venice Lido September 7, 2004.

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