On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan

Ian McEwan’s impressive novel astutely explores complicated psychological dynamics. The year is 1962. Edward Mayhew and Florence Ponting are staying at an inn perched on a bluff overlooking Chesil Beach and the English Channel. Here is the first sentence, "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.”

Married that morning, this novel describes their disastrous attempt to consummate their marriage. That Edward and Florence share a deep love for one another is never in doubt. Their connection is honest, playful, and respectful. Yet, they both have psychological dimensions of themselves they have not explored. After a lovely wedding and reception, their fears, expectations, and innocence infiltrate the hotel room and their easy rapport dissolves. McEwan’s precise prose describes the wrenching events and powerful emotions that end the marriage before it begins. His carefully crafted sentences operate on multiple levels. He describes the dominant factors that shaped Edward and Florence’s childhoods and offers insight into their responses to their sexual encounter. He alludes to the possibility that Florence’s father sexually abused Florence. But that possibility has not emerged from Florence’s unconscious. Edward, too, has issues. McEwan writes, ”The language and practice of therapy, the currency of feelings diligently shared, mutually analyzed, and were not yet in general circulation.”  Even still, I want to climb into the book and tell Florence and Edward: Take a deep breath. You love each other. You can work this out.

Instead, Florence and Edward withdrawal from each other and develop their separate narratives about what went wrong. Given the high emotion of this intimate encounter, they feel embarrassed, ashamed, and angry. Their vulnerability and insecurities prohibit them from authentically sharing their feelings. They lash out, retreat from one another, and return to their prior lives. McEwan describes the multiple layers of miscomprehension: “And what stood in their way? Their personalities and pasts, their ignorance and fear, timidity, squeamishness, lack of entitlement or experiences or easy manners, then the tail end of a religious prohibition, their Englishness and class, and history itself. Nothing much at all."

McEwan shows us their futures without one another. He reminds his readers that one event or even one evening can change the trajectory of a life. At the end of the book, Edward is in his 60’s and is  ruminating about his wedding night 40 years ago: “All she had needed was the certainty of his love, and his reassurance that there was no hurry when a lifetime lay ahead of them. Love and patience - if only he had had them both at once - would have surely seen them both through. This is how the entire course of a life can be changed-by doing nothing.” With psychological insight, McEwan provides a vivid portrait of a couple that loves each other - but tragically, in this story, love is not enough.