When did the events of this narrative take place, one immediately wonders? The author mentions that they were some time ago, similar issues not likely to occur these days. Edward and Florence seem Victorian in their reticence, their innocence, their propriety, and yet they arrive at their honeymoon hotel in 1962, and Edward is 22 years old, Florence presumably about the same age. Their naiveté almost stretches the bounds of credulity. Why are they, in their early twenties, so sexually inexperienced, so tongue-tied about their fears and feelings, so inarticulate with each other? For that matter, why is sex a subject and issue so fraught with anxiety for so many in our own society, even today? No matter how it is addressed, no matter how its expression manifests itself, it is treated as something uniquely troubling, uniquely examined and experienced, uniquely compelling and mesmerizing, in a different emotional and experiential category from all other aspects of life. And this makes it a fascinating subject for speculation and consideration in many artistic media. McEwan’s short novel addresses this head on, refusing to turn its eyes decorously or modestly aside, and he skillfully pulls the reader into the young couple’s discomfort. Describing Edward and Florence’s long relationship leading to this evening, McEwan writes, “Their courtship had been a pavane, a stately unfolding, bound by protocols never agreed or voiced but generally observed – nor did they feel the lack of intimate talk.” This was before the time of routine psychological conversation, of intimate feelings regularly shared. Thus, Edward’s eagerness but sexual inexperience never recognized Florence’s fear and disgust at anything sexual, feelings she had never articulated, setting up awkward and contradictory expectations and emotions about the wedding night. Consequently, on this final evening, small actions, subtle gestures, are noted and often misinterpreted, Edward assuming that Florence’s repugnance is a sign of coyness, the initiatives that she attempts in order to try to compensate for her true feelings a sign of eagerness and passion. Florence for her part interprets Edwards nervous attempts at humor as brusqueness. Communication struggles to be meaningful and accurate under the weight of nervous subterfuge and nuanced indirection, thus doomed to be misunderstood. In this brief narrative, encompassing but two hours in the lives of the protagonists, McEwan alternates long descriptions of rising sexual tension, frustration, misunderstanding, and emotional panic with equally lengthy flashbacks of Edward and Florence’s lives before this evening, their lives both individually and together. The background of each, the family of origin of each, was unique and often difficult, but what background and family is not? Edward’s was less affluent and privileged than Florence’s. Florence was more prone to hide her feelings from others and from herself, less prone to introspection, more inclined to denial of her own needs and more prone to avoid conflict by a retreat into herself. For his part, Edward was accustomed to play out a charade at home, a home with a devoted and caring father, a mentally deranged mother. The roots of the inevitable problems that Edward and Florence encountered together were planted early and long nurtured. We are the products of, and we are haunted by, our pasts.The narrative plays itself out in predictable tragedy, the result of failure, humiliation, and recriminations that love cannot bridge. McEwan’s “afterward,” the tracing of Edward’s and Florence’s lives after that wrenching evening, is as poignant, anguished, and in a way tender a piece of writing as I can recall. Haunting in its sensitivity and perceptiveness, this novel is one of the most searing and compelling that I have read in a long time.
Short, not much more than a novella, but almost perfect. In 1962 Edward and Florence are between their wedding day and first night together. They are deeply in love but know next to nothing about each other. In that sense, the book could be about any age; what sets it firmly in 1962** (or really in any age up till then – it feels particularly Edwardian too) is that they are still virgins, and the sexual accident and misunderstanding that happens that evening would now have occurred much earlier in their lives. So Edward is mortified and desperate to find fault; Florence is appalled and disgusted, her suppressed fears have come true, and she can’t stay in the room with him any longer. For a while at least, she needs to be alone. But what happens afterwards is timeless, really. It doesn’t matter what the trigger was, these two are polite to a fault, but strangers to each other. You want to scream “oh, just say you’re sorry! That it will all get better!” But of course neither of them can; they’re trapped in their own fear, anger, hurt pride, and embarrassment; and they part. The last few pages follow Edward’s later life where there is more than a hint of regret. And the point of the novel is, as Edward discovers (now, some forty years later), when he at last can admit that Florence was the one he had loved most in his life, that “this is how the entire course of a life can be changed—by doing nothing.” But this of course is only Edward’s voice, and I wonder if that is actually the message: after all Edward didn’t do “nothing” ... he hurled the ultimate insults of the ‘60s – frigid and bitch; after which there could perhaps be no reconciliation. About Florence’s later life, we learn little except that her string quartet did become successful and famous; perhaps she had no regrets at all. I think the real message is that being deeply in love is not enough; it can take a lifetime to know someone.Memorable quotes: "This was not a good moment in the history of English cuisine, but no one much minded at the time, except visitors from abroad.""On Chesil Beach he could have called out to Florence, he could have gone after her. He did not know, or would not have cared to know, that as she ran away from him, certain in her distress that she was about to lose him, she had never loved him more, or more hopelessly, and that the sound of his voice would have been a deliverance, and she would have turned back. Instead, he stood in cold and righteous silence in the summer’s dusk""“You’re a bitch talking like that.” The word was a starburst in the night sky. Now she could say what she liked.""Edward took the next steps with fatal ease: she had known all this—how could she not?—and she had deceived him. She wanted a husband for the sake of respectability, or to please her parents, or because it was what everyone did. Or she thought it was a marvelous game. She did not love him, she could not love in the way that men and women loved, and she knew this and kept it from him. She was dishonest.""It is not easy to pursue such hard truths in bare feet and underpants."** this is not exactly relevant, but it reminds me of Philip Larkin’s Annus Mirabilis: Sexual intercourse began / In nineteen sixty-three / (which was rather late for me) / Between the end of the Chatterley ban / And the Beatles' first LP
What do You think about On Chesil Beach (2007)?
Kao i uvek, i ovaj put Makjuanovi junaci su ljudi od krvi i mesa, puni strahova, predrasuda, kompleksa. Kod njega nema lažnog morala, on ogoljuje ljudsko telo i ističe sve njegove nedostatke, ali ne zato da bi ga izvrgao ruglu, već zato što je ono upravo takvo - nesavršeno i puno mana, baš kao što je i ljudska duša mračna i tajnovita."Čezil Bič" se može posmatrati i kao studija o komunikaciji i poverenju među životnim partnerima, otvorenosti i poštovanju tuđih osećanja, spremnosti da se problemi reše i prevaziđu ili da se jednostavno dignu ruke od svega. Koliko zapravo poznajemo osobu sa kojom živimo, delimo sto i postelju?Makjuanov jezik je slobodan i lišen bilo kakvih stega, a njegova dela se lako čitaju. Neko bi rekao da je pitak, on to u neku ruku i jeste, ali u isto vreme je i izuzetno kompleksan, baš kao i njegovi likovi, koji na prvi pogled deluju obično i svakodnevno, a onda kad se zagrebe po površini, može se videti sva teskoba i muka koja ih pritiska i osakaćuje. I ono najbitnije, Makjuan se ne plaši da kaže ono što velika većina nas misli ili oseća.Mogu slobodno da kažem da je Makjuan, uz Markesa, svojim jezikom i složenošću tema koje obrađuje obogatio moju čitalačku 2014.godinu.Ocena: 4.5/5
—Jadranka
It took me three years to finish it. I bought it on Heathrow, eyes full of tears because I was departing from my boyfriend in Dublin via London. It was the n-th time I did this, fiercely sobbing while sitting on my luggage and hating every step of the known airport. It always took me a while to get a hold of myself, because London has always been no-man's land. Up to now, London has taken place as the place where my bipolar relationship reached its highs and lows. My head spinning in all directions, looking at my passport and my fucking mobile phone switched off, because I couldn’t stand another aching I love you, getting me back in that comfort zone. Confusing life-calling-reality obligations with my long-distance-relationship angst. It was really a long exhausting process. And luckily, then I still wasn’t prepared for this book. I would have found myself in novella’s last 20 pages and I would have murdered this stunningly doomed book. It’s about our tempered decisions and how they influence us. McEwan’s words have had a huge impact on me and he doesn’t waste them. Tragedies are not always loud. Impatience of the youth often creates an avalanche. And then memories, shame, regret and longing are your new adult companions.
—Jana
On reflection, I am giving this book 5 stars. I have thought about it a lot since finishing it and I think its a great piece of writing. Ah, what a sad but incredibly lovely read this was. Imagine the utmost British reserve, twined with the era in which this is set: very early 1960's, maddeningly close but fractionally before the explosion of free love and flower power. For Florence and Edward, the young newly weds, this story is beautifully unwrapped in sparse yet rich prose as two individuals, both of rather eccentric upbringings, who come together in an assumption of love, yet due to their backgrounds and inward reserve, have a tortured passage towards their union as husband and wife.The description of both made me almost feel that they had been hugely unlucky to be born in that exact time as they so narrowly missed out on a wave of open love which might have knocked them off their feet and carried them along with a force they both naturally lack due to their reserve, shyness, sense of duty, call it what you will, utterly tragic and with dire consequences.Both characters' parents are brought into the mix, perhaps to show that their eccentricities were partly responsible for producing children who were painfully aware of their sexuality but unable to realise what they should and could be capable of in a free and loving environment, simply because they had never been shown or told that this sort of love is natural and wonderful. The novel, although short, truly conveys the distinct possibility that one's actions can have a lifelong effect on us. In terms of writing, I felt that Ian McEwan really was a brilliantly beautiful writer of this tale and really conveyed such a sense of awakening in both characters - see below:'For the first time, her love for Edward was associated with a definable physical sensation, as irrefutable as vertigo. Before, she had known only a comforting broth of warm emotions,a thick winter blanket of kindness and trust. That had always seemed enough, an achievement in itself. Now here at last were the beginnings of desire, precise and alien, but clearly her own: and beyond, as though suspended above and behind her, just out of sight, was relief that she was just like everyone else.'Just enough detail in their day to day lives but it really sprang into life in his descriptions of their feelings and natural make-up and how they were discovering more about themselves and each other day by day. Ultimately, what Florence discovers about herself and how this manifests itself in her new marriage has major consequences for both. I was very moved by this short read and the final passages were so well written that I wont forget them for a long time.
—Angie
