Book Review: On Chesil Beach

Innocence, ignorance, virginity, love and love lost form the core of this book 'On Chesil beach'. This is the first Ian McEwan read of mine. Thanks Shree for the fabulous birthday gift and introducing me to the world of McEwan. There is such a powerful and composed demeanour in his writing style. In a literary world where shamelessness has become like a high stakes art form, it is so refreshing to know that there are still writers like McEwan who can spend about 200 pages writing about the physical action of making love and still not make it seem dirty in the least. The clinical, yet beautiful way in which he treats the act of foreplay and that of making love is laudable. It's a story of a single night and what transpires between a newly married lovely couple on that night.

On Chesil Beach begins thus:
"They were young, educated, and both virgins on this, their wedding night, and they lived in a time when a conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible. But it is never easy."

In the sexually liberated otherworld called the US of A, it might be difficult for young readers to see the point that McEwan is trying to make. But coming from a sexually repressive land like India, I could totally see the same point. That when talking about sex and learning about sex is restricted to badly made pornographic movies and make believe hearsay from peers and older friends in school, the naivette that is unknowingly absorbed into the act of first sex could be the make-or-break part of that relationship. Come to think of it, how many of us are still in talking terms with the very first person that we lost our virginity too? And haven't most of us gained the most knowledge about sex, just along the learning curve of doing more of the same thing over and over again? I still need to find out how this tale resonates to a younger American generation of modern American sensibilities. For McEwan, when he might have begun writing this novel, it might have seemed an uphill task - how can he explain this reticence to younger readers — the children and grandchildren of the generation to whom loss of virginity is taken for granted and to bother about it is merely an oddity?

Probably McEwan decided to make this arduous task easier by staging this drama as a period piece. The date is 1962, just before London began to swing and civilization as we know it today succumbed gratefully to sex and drugs and violence and internet. Thank God for small mercies! And for all those sweet evil discoveries! So the lead characters of On Chesil Beach, Edward and Florence, like all middle class and upper class kids of those days were sexually unaware, inexperienced and ignorant. They were also again like all middle class and upper class kids of those days obedient, well behaved, class-conscious and withheld. Maybe the former mentioned qualities were an offspring of the latter. How beautifully McEwan puts it as "This was still the era, when to be young was a social encumbrance, a mark of irrelevance, a faintly embarrassing condition for which marriage was the beginning of a cure." Oh how strongly this condition relates to a younger Indian generation today - to whose symptoms, the only antidote suggested by an older generation is a grand, arranged marriage. Who should know this better than an unmarried guy, of a highly marriageable age like me?

Just like our parents might have thought in their hey days, Edward from this novel "firmly believed that to make love—and for the very first time—merely by unzipping his fly was unsensual and gross. And impolite." And to top it all, besides all these feelings that he has to overcome to make love to his newly wed (whom he is most clearly in love with too), he also suffers from premature ejaculation. A condition that he is slightly aware of, and which scares him mighty whether it would create an indelible blot on his masculinity the very first night that he can rightfully claim his place in the echelons of manhood.

On the other hand, his lovely, newly married wife has her own set of problems. She loves him passionately, but only with her eyes: "her whole being was in revolt against a prospect of entanglement and flesh.... She simply did not want to be 'entered' or 'penetrated.'" She loves him and needs him, but with an "excruciating physical reticence" — which of course makes her even more desirable to him. She never had sampled the taste and the fruit of such passion, but just the thought of it made her inner body coil and revolt. She had such revulsion to the entire act of making love, that she had all these ghosts to fight off the night they got married.

What would happen on the wedding night between two such people who had little help from the outside world in solving these problems? At a time when talking about sex was taboo?

His erotic expectations and her physical dread turn the wedding night into a catastrophe. He comes prematurely all over her, "filling her navel, coating her belly, thighs and even a portion of her chin and kneecap in tepid, viscous fluid" — as always, McEwan is clinically precise — and she reacts with almost Victorian disgust: "Nothing in her nature could have held back her instant cry of revulsion."

What path does the story take from here? I am almost tempted to narrate the rest of the story out and further dissect my feelings regarding that part. But I would have to resist. If even one person can pick up the book and read it from beginning to end, experiencing the sheer surge of emotions with every line of detail as only a master conductor can orchestrate, I would consider my review on the book to be of use. A must read, a sheer delight, which will make you dream of all the times in your life when you made the wrong decisions and wrong choices in life due to words not said and actions not taken. You will close the book and recount those numerous occasions and think 'What if?'

On Chesil Beach is brief and carefully plotted, a quick, interesting read, the writing style is very composed, the tone of voice is nostalgic. As I pondered a bit more about the book, after finishing it, I couldn't but help wonder whether the same set of problems occurred between a set of partners, in today's world, who are more sexually experienced and aware?