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Guy Patrick Cunningham is a writer and critic living in Hoboken, New Jersey.

On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
Reviewed by Guy Patrick Cunningham
Posted: June 26, 2007

Just a couple weeks ago, The New Yorker profiled Tom Staley, director of the Ransom Center at the University of Texas. Ransom may be the most famous literary archive in the world, holding the corrected proofs for James Joyce’s Ulysses, Ezra Pound’s personal copy of The Waste Land, and the private papers of countless literary greats. In the course of the article, Staley discussed how he goes about deciding which living writers to collect on the center’s behalf. He divides them using letter grades, to indicate their perceived importance. For “C” writers, Ransom may want copies of a few key publications. For “B” writers a bit more. But “A” writers, as you might expect, were his highest priorities, the ones whose entire output was so impressive that their personal archives were deemed worthy enough to place alongside Joyce’s, Eliot’s, and all the rest. The only name Staley was willing to add to that list, the one author he was willing to go on record calling an “A” writer, was Ian McEwan.

None of this has any bearing on whether or not On Chesil Beach is a good novel, of course, but it’s a good starting point for discussing it. McEwan has become one of the few living authors that are already seen as “canonical.” And that brings with it a whole host of expectations that are not really his fault, and shouldn’t be his problem. Atonement in particular is one of the defining “big” novels of the last decade or so, with a narrative that stretches across decades and crashes headlong into the Second World War (probably the single “biggest” subject in modern history.) Even McEwan’s most recent work—Saturday, an intimate portrait of a middle-aged doctor and his family as they deal with a terrifyingly personal crisis—invokes the way ordinary life has been transformed in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Again, he paints a big picture, even if it’s shown in a small frame.

But McEwan’s new novel isn’t big. It’s a short (203 pages,) focused book that tells the story of Edward Mayhew and Florence Ponting on their wedding night in 1962. And the seeming smallness of that story, the ordinariness of it, is disappointing at first. Edward and Florence’s sexual issues could seem outdated to readers born too late to experience firsthand the repressions of pre-Sexual-Revolution Britain (or America, for that matter.) The book’s modesty is so apparent that it risks coming across as conservative—playing with a “safe” topic now lost in history. This is especially true for readers born in the (45) years since the novel takes place, who might wonder why they should care about these people at all.

But those who shrug off On Chesil Beach as ephemera are missing out on a rather fascinating study of sexual repression and the way society’s mores can damage people caught up in them. The novel lays itself plain from the first line, beginning: “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.” Far from the riotous rite of passage depicted in some Hollywood summer comedies, the impending loss of their virginity is a cloud over the couple (both are 22 on the night of the wedding.)

Edward, with his blues records and his brawling past, is a particular surprise, just because his outward combination of sophistication (he is a dedicated historian) and earthiness (he is shown in flashback pummeling a bully for insulting one of Edward’s bookish friends) suggests to the contemporary reader a degree of sexual awareness. But he is in over his head when it comes to sex, inexperienced and gripped by what can only be described as desperation to change that. Even his marriage proposal itself is provoked by his inability to sleep with Florence otherwise: “As soon as she pulled away he knew he could bear it no more. He asked her to marry him.”

On second thought, Edward actually has quite a bit in common with the boys from American Pie. After all, Edward is looking to lose his virginity no matter what the cost. And like his comedic brethren, he’s tormented by the belief that somewhere everyone else his age is off having sex while he is getting left behind. He even goes so far as to cruise his university’s English Department, because, “There were rumors that in the English Department, and along the road at the School of Oriental and African Studies and down Kingsway at the London School of Economics, men and women in tight black jeans and black polo-neck sweaters had constant easy sex, without having to meet each other’s parents.” Sadly, the English Department lets Edward down, and his sexual frustration continues to boil over right until his wedding night.

Unfortunately, his new bride is just as desperate to keep her virginity. This contrast is evident from almost the moment we meet them, as we learn: “Where he merely suffered conventional first-night nerves, she experienced a visceral dread, a helpless disgust as palpable as seasickness.” She play-acts at sexuality for Edward’s benefit, even initiating their marriage’s fateful “consummation” because, “She could not bear to let Edward down.” But internally, her disgust is pervasive, and Florence never really stops looking for a way out of having intercourse with her husband, even as she leads him to bed.

Some readers might immediately point to Florence’s attachment to her female college friends, her pronounced discomfort with the opposite sex, and her disgust at the very word “penetrate,” and make their own conclusions as to exactly what underlies her “palpable disgust”. But the novel doesn’t give us nearly enough to support any speculation about Florence’s sexuality. In many ways, she merely embodies the excesses of a sexually repressed culture. After events have come to their inevitably disappointing conclusion, she reflects that, “As she understood it, there were no words to name what had happened, there existed no shared language in which two adults could describe such events to each other.”

This lack of communication, the way society’s inability to talk about sex has rendered Edward and Florence nearly mute, is the most intriguing aspect of the novel—so much so that it redeems On Chesil Beach from becoming a period piece. At the bottom of it, their problem is one of language. There is very little dialogue in the first two-thirds of the novel, brining the emotional distance of these two people—who genuinely love each other—into stark relief. “Their wedding night, and they had nothing to say.”  

Florence truly cannot express her discomfort with sex because, “Such a language had not been invented.” And Edward fares no better, unable to articulate his anxiety or his desire. Instead he turns everything inward, until his sexual energy nearly overwhelms him. The two silently grope through their wedding night as long as they can.  And then they have to speak, even if it is too late for it to do any good. There is a power to that eventual conversation that is undeniable, making On Chesil Beach impossible to dismiss. It certainly does not rank as one of McEwan defining achievements. It is still too modest, too rooted in the past, to explode the way Saturday does. But judged on its own terms, it is well worth reading. Let Tom Staley worry about the canon.

Copyright © 2007 Guy Patrick Cunningham