![]() Both they and the society to which they belong are on the cusp of momentous change. ![]() Set in July 1962-”not a good moment in the history of English cuisine,” our omniscient narrator dryly notes-the novel follows the fortunes of Edward and Florence, both 22, as they prepare for the ordeal of their wedding night in a Georgian inn overlooking the shingle expanse of Chesil beach. ![]() Like much of McEwan’s best work, On Chesil Beach is structured around the transforming horror of a single moment. This is a glib summary, but not entirely misleading. How, Banville asked, could we be expected to take seriously this self-satisfied world in which “no one suffers from morning breath, and women long-married wake up every time primed for sex?” Banville will, I suspect, breathe a sigh of relief as he reads On Chesil Beach, which describes a marriage torn apart in its first 24 hours through the agency of premature ejaculation. ![]() When John Banville demolished Ian McEwan’s last novel, Saturday, in the New York Review of Books, he reserved particular scorn for the amatory encounters between its main character, Henry Perowne, and his “unfailingly fragrant” wife. Review of Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach, first published in Prospect, April 2007 ![]()
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