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It is 1962, the last year before a watershed revolution in sexual mores that would define the entire decade. Florence, a polite violinist, marries Edward, a polite historian who specializes in apocalyptic cults of the Middle Ages. Both are in their early 20’s; both sincerely love each other and were raised in a repressed society that imposed sexual silence.

On the first night of her honeymoon, Florence dreams about the day when her string quartet will perform at Wigmore Hall. She rapturously imagines Edward there, listening, eyes leaking tears at her accomplishment. Meanwhile, Edward dreams of ravishing his wife, whose naked body he has not even seen. Unfortunately, Florence has not adequately considered her solemn vow of a few hours earlier: “With my body, I thee worship.� After reflecting on their childhoods, parents, and chaste courtship over an unappetizing dinner, the couple heads to the bedroom, which overlooks Chesil Beach. Soon, on the beach, the couple will experience their first intimacy. A fight. Florence proclaims a problem and offers a proposition. Anger sets them free. Irrevocable decisions will be made quickly, and then reflected upon from a distance of 40 years--at the conclusion of the novel, which in its entirety consists of 200 pages of McEwan’s precise observation and crisp prose.

Marriage or any romantic relationship is an invitation to manners, mystery, and misunderstanding. The beloved is complicated. A thousand unacknowledged rules apply. It takes years of patient experience for a couple to disentangle idealistic myths and cultural baggage from the authentic individuality of their two selves, which are possessed with separate--sometimes complementary but sometimes contradictory identities. We collude in a fantasy that can be sustained only if it is not discussed. “They lived in a time when a conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible. But it is never easy.� Even in permissive times, we remain silent and the majority of marriages and relationships fail, whether or not legally dissolved. “Being in love was not a steady state, but a matter of fresh surges or waves.� The participants in the venture are flung like smooth pebbles in rough surf.

Ian McEwan sent me limping off to seek consolation in Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 about the enduring "marriage" of true minds. Shakespeare declares love’s permanency, McEwan its fragility. One minute we exchange promises with earnest adoration, the next minute, a flash ignites, a combustible mixture of righteous anger and wounded pride, and we implode into rubble. Any bond of true minds might be mere words and minutes from a relationship-apocalypse.

The fate of a relationship can be decided in one moment, or over time, a cliff can disintegrate into the millions of stones upon the shingle at Chesil Beach. Florence and Edward learn the truth after only 12 hours of marriage; some couples must wait 28 years to learn their ruinous truth. Which is better? Should we make a clean break or tough it out? Yet, failed love is no less intense than enduring love. Contrary to the aspirations of the sonnet, it takes only a wave to topple the lighthouse; it takes only a word to extinguish the North Star. “If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved.�

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Plot Summary for My Reference: (view spoiler)[ Edward prematurely ejaculates over her body. She is disgusted and runs down to Chesil Beach. He follows. Hateful words are exchanged by both who take delicious delight in their outrage. She confesses to being asexual. He describes her as frigid and deceitful. They cool down. They remember their love. She loves Edward and wants to be with him, so she offers to let him sleep with other women if he stays with her. Now, he is the one disgusted. They part and have the marriage annulled for lack of consummation. Edward, in the freewheeling 1960’s and 70’s has the freedom to have sex with many women, but he ends up, in 2007, alone and lonely. He admits that he never loved anyone as much as Florence. Earlier, Edward had read in a newspaper music review that Florence realized her dream of playing at Wigmore Hall, but he preferred to preserve his memories of her that night on Chesil Beach rather than having reached out. He questions whether he made a horrible mistake in remaining silent when his true love walked away. “This is how the entire course of a life can be changed by doing nothing.� Patience and kindness were called for but he could not deliver them that night, one moment in time, at Chesil Beach. (hide spoiler)]

Quotations for Reference. (view spoiler)["At the end of a year of straining to contain himself, he was not able to hold himself back and had failed at the crucial moment, then he refused to take the blame. That was it. He rejected this humiliation, he did not recognize it. It was outrageous of her to cry out in disappointment, to flounce from the room, when the fault was hers. He should accept the fact, she did not like kissing and touching, she did not like their bodies to be close, she had no interest in him. She was unsensual, utterly without desire. She could never feel what he felt. 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."

"His anger stirred her own and she suddenly thought she understood their problem: they were too polite, too constrained, too timorous, they went around each other on tiptoes, murmuring, whispering, deferring, agreeing. They barely knew each other, and never could because of the blanket of companionable near-silence that smothered their difference and blinded them as much as it bound them. They had been frightened of ever disagreeing, and now his anger was setting her free. She wanted to hurt him, punish him to make herself distinct from him. It was such an unfamiliar impulse in her, toward the thrill of destruction, that she had no resistance against it. Her heart beat hard and she wanted to tell him that she hated him, and she was about to say these harsh and wonderful words that she had never uttered before in her life when he spoke first. He was back to his starting point, and calling on all his dignity to reprimand her." (hide spoiler)]