On Chesil Beach

This is a book that's hard to pin down, despite its shortness (181 pages). Centered around what seems like a rather prosaic tale of a young couple on their wedding night, it throws out tendrils backwards and sideways in history - it takes place in 1962, right before the world turned upside down, the dying days of the British Empire with damp tweed and "No sex, please, we're British." Edward and Florence are products of their past, both in terms of culture and family (and both have family secrets), two completely different individuals who, in a slightly Nabokovian way, gaze deeply and lovingly into each others' eyes and only see what they want to see in each other. Right up until the point where it all becomes nakedly apparent that they want very different things.

This is only the second McEwan I've read, but I do believe it whetted my appetite a lot more than Saturday did. It's a brief concerto in five movements for violin and electric guitar, both intro and outro, played right at the point where everything hangs in the balance and could go either way and nobody knows exactly which note will turn out to break the harmony. McEwan's off-key once or twice (how, exactly, would Edward manage to play Florence a Beatles tune in 1961?) and the ending is a bit rushed, but on a whole, it's a beautifully written and, on closer reading, somewhat disturbing book.