November 2011 Guest Editor Victoria Hislop selects On Chesil Beach...
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan is a favourite McEwan novel, though I have loved them all. I admire the spareness of his writing - it always seems as if he has written the whole story in his head before he commits it to the page. Nothing is left to chance. The characters are always vivid and memorable - and the plots utterly original and every novel is a surprise. Perhaps I admire this novel most of all his works because of its brevity. It is a huge story in a tiny volume. I admire that skill enormously, to say so much in so few words is a great gift.
Winner of the Book of the Year and Author of the Year at the Galaxy British Book Awards 2008. A heartbreaking novel that is beautifully written. So much can be undone by what is left unsaid and McEwan is a master at conveying this.
Please note that this title is also available in a Large Print edition. Click here to find out more.
It is July 1962. Edward and Florence, young innocents married that morning, arrive at a hotel on the Dorset coast. At dinner in their rooms they struggle to suppress their private fears of the wedding night to come and, unbeknownst to them both, the events of the evening will haunt them for the rest of their lives.
'A master feat of concentration in both senses of the word' Peter Kemp, Sunday Times
'It is a masterpiece. The very idea that informs it, fascinating and unfamiliar, is masterly' Karl Miller, TLS
'McEwan’s brilliance as a novelist lies in his ability to isolate discrete moments in life and invest them with incredible significance' Tim Adams, Observer
Author
About Ian McEwan
Ian McEwan is a critically acclaimed author of short stories and novels for adults, as well as The Daydreamer, a children's novel illustrated by Anthony Browne. His first published work, a collection of short stories, First Love, Last Rites, won the Somerset Maugham Award. His novels include The Child in Time, which won the 1987 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award, The Cement Garden, Enduring Love, Amsterdam, which won the 1998 Booker Prize, Atonement and Saturday.
