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This deceptively light novella describes the events of Florence and Edward’s disastrous honeymoon night in 1962, interspersed with details of their childhoods and courtship to suggest how those influenced what happened.

(Update re film at the bottom...)

It is clinical and understated from the start: “The wedding... had gone well�� and the “weather... not perfect but entirely adequate�� and continues in the bedroom with detailed descriptions of physical sensations of skin, muscle, and even individual hairs: “stroking... for more than one and a half minutes�� (too precise).

Florence is “incapable of rudeness��, Edward “polite to a fault�� and both are virgins and unable to discuss intimate things (“There were no words to name what had happened, there existed no shared language.��), leading to misunderstandings, lost opportunities and unexpected consequences.

Edward is guided by duty.

Florence is guided by guilt (though not being religious, she can’t get absolution) and has a “visceral dread�� of sex, realising that “sex with Edward could not be the summation of her joy, but was the price she must pay for it��.


Photo: On Chesil Beach, April 2016: sea in front (barely visible), lagoon behind.

Destiny

A major theme is destiny, which is perhaps the converse of missed opportunities. “They regarded themselves as too sophisticated to believe in destiny��, yet it was a belief in destiny that prompted Florence to form her quartet, and Florence and Edward inferred the hand of destiny in the extreme improbability of their meeting, plus Edward wants to study and write about how powerful individuals can change destiny.

Contrasts

They are very different: Florence is a classical musician from a privileged academic city background, lacking in confidence - except where music is concerned.

Edward is quiet but (in the past) occasionally explosive, a history graduate from a rural “squalid family home�� with a brain damaged mother.

Both are used to leaving things unsaid: Florence is “adept at concealing her feelings from her family�� and “lived in isolation within herself��, while Edward grew up in a family that colluded in his mother’s fantasy of a well-run household by not talking about it. He secretly chose a London university instead of nearby Oxford as part of “his sense of a concealed life��.

Music is often important in McEwan's works. Florence and Edward's musical tastes are fundamentally incompatible (though they try), yet for Florence music is her “path to pleasure��, rather than physical intimacy.

Although Edward’s family home was chaotic and somewhat repressed, it was loving. He enjoys the “exotic opulence�� of Florence’s home, and although not a social climber, “his desire for Florence was inseparable from the setting��.

Florence was raised by nannies, and her mother is uninterested in her, tone deaf and “had barely ever touched her daughter��. Her relationship with her father is more subtle, but perhaps more troubling. Sometimes she found him “physically repellent�� and sometimes she’d hug and kiss him, and loather herself for it. She even jokes about marrying him. Although “he never touched her... in Edward’s sight��, they were “intensely aware of each other�� (he did hug her sister), and took overnight trips alone together, even sharing a room on the boat.

At times, Florence feels more like the parent or child of Edward, rather than his girlfriend or wife.

Ebb and Flow

There is plenty of see-sawing in the book: the ebb and flow of the sea on the stones of Chesil Beach; of desire; of who to blame for what goes wrong (both in the minds of the characters and the readers); and Florence’s feelings about her father, and whether or not she thinks there is something wrong with Edward or herself.

Nowadays

The story, and especially the ending, would be implausible nowadays, but fits the characters and the period.

My parents married at almost exactly the same ages, in almost the same year, and I can see many similarities in aspects of my mother's upbringing and attitudes and Florence's. I'm unsure whether she'd see that (or want to).

The fact that Edward “fell away from history to live snugly in the present�� seems entirely appropriate.

It is a raw and painful book in places, all the more ironic given that it is set in the allegedly “swinging 60s��. There is additional irony in the fact that Florence takes Edward’s cherry �� but only at dinner (an image oddly missing from the film).

Complimentary Novels

Two were written in the 60s, about the 60s, and feature a woman struggling with sexual intimacy, against the zeitgeist of the swinging 60s:

Margaret Drabble’s The Millstone (see my review HERE).

Lynne Reid Banks' The L Shaped Room (see my review HERE).

One of my two favourite books was written in the 60s, describing the life (and awful marriage) of a man born at the turn of the century, John Williams' exquisite Stoner (see my review HERE).

Also, Julian Barnes' 1986 novel, Staring at the Sun (see my review HERE), has similarly poignant anxiety about sex, though it takes a more humorous angle.


UPDATE re Film of 2018

The film was brilliant, beautiful, and mostly true to the spirit of my memory of the book (eight years earlier) - with one HUGE caveat.

The significant difference is that there was more afterstory than I remember. That didn't feel necessary, and in particular, the fact that in the film, Florence went on to (view spoiler)[have three children, starting very soon after the annulment of her marriage to Edward, totally changes the causes and consequences of what went wrong on their wedding night (hide spoiler)].

Florence's relationship with her father was still subtle (so much so, my husband, who hasn't read the book, was oblivious to its likely significance).

It stars the luminously vulnerable and always watchable Saoirse Ronan, who first rose to prominence in another McEwan adaptation, Atonement. The rest of the cast are good, too. See .

The dramatic views of Chesil Beach are perfect, avoiding the cliché of extreme weather, but having a vaguely brooding heaviness. You hear the crunch of the pebbles, underfoot, and as waves wash up and percolate down. The lagoon behind is still and silent. Florence and Edward are the only people in sight.

McEwan wrote the screenplay, so it's not surprising it's faithful. It certainly brought home the message that their wedding night conversations should have happened long before they married.

Go see it - but don't stay for the end!