Ian McEwan’s astonishingly heartbreaking book, On Chesil Beach opens with the line: "They were young, educated, and both virgins on this, their wedding night, and they lived in a time when conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible." McEwan’s opener is a good indication that this novel is about young love, sex, unspoken expectations and paralyzing repression that simply isn’t going to end well for the couple. The suspense of the work is built around the questions of what has caused their great miscommunication; how badly will their honeymoon go and what consequences will be suffered due to an awkward wedding night?
The two innocents in question are Edward Mayhew and Florence Ponting. He is a historian who is the son of a principled schoolmaster and a sweet, brain-damaged mother. She is a virtuoso violinist who is the daughter of a workaholic corporate tycoon and a workaholic mother who is an Oxford philosopher, preferring Schopenhauer over her own daughters. After a yearlong tender (but not particularly intimate) courtship, the couple exchange marital vows, receive lovely well-wishes from friends and family, and finally are alone in the honeymoon suite on their wedding night.
"What stood in their way?" asks the narrator, "Their personalities and pasts, their ignorance and fear, timidity, squeamishness, lack of entitlement or experience, then the tail end of a religious prohibition, their Englishness and class, and history itself."
Alone in that room with the four-post bed taunting them, the couple possess innocence, hope and promise. But, it does not take long for their naïveté to be jaded through a series of miscues, fumbling and ham-fisted caresses. She approaches the marital bed with a sense of “visceral dread” and he follows her with feelings of excitement, nervousness and inadequacy. None of their uncertainties are articulated verbally, and they grossly misinterpret each other’s non-verbal cues. She is so fearful that her legs twitch and he misreads it for excitement. This series of miscommunication creates a bizarre tragicomedy that focuses on the intimate details of their consummation but in no way enters the realm of slapstick or eroticism. The comedic elements of the sexual awkwardness become devastatingly tragic in a very short period time.
The sexual encounter occurs in real time and the life-alerting events unfold in probably less than two-hours. In order to break-up the drama in the bedroom while also heightening the suspense, McEwan’s interweaves the stories of both of their upbringings and the mythology that they created about their accidental meeting and subsequent betrothal. Their class, their parental relationships, their educations, their passions, their values, their anxieties and their differing music tastes all climb into bed with them and dance towards reconciliation, but the beat is never found and the perpetual stumbling knocks them both down permanently and irreparably. The beauty is in watching their synchronicity tragically dissipate into experienced ruins.
The magic of this book is how much richness fills 160 pages. The brevity of this book makes it more of a novella than a novel technically, but it is a complete novel in every way. McEwan, who has a reputation for creating cold characters in his forensic style of prose, in this work crafts beautifully rounded characters with lushness and precision. Both Edward and Florence are likable and believable. Their warmth is felt through the page and pulls the reader into their calamity. While creating such full portraits of his main characters, he also touches upon the issues of class, politics, familial influences, repression, miscommunication, and social expectations in 1962 prior to the sexual revolution.
With the pure grace and poise exhibited in this novel, it is no surprise that it was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2007. This work of literary fiction epitomizes what great fiction is -- interesting characters, original plot, intriguing setting, emotional dialogue, and a satisfying ending even if it is not a happy ending. Yes, this book is tragic and depressing. A month later, I still get a little sad when I think about Edward and Florence. But can one ever get enough tragically heartbreaking English dramas? Of course not.
