It is June 1962. In a hotel on the Dorset coast, overlooking Chesil Beach, Edward and Florence, who got married that morning, are sitting down to dinner in their room. Neither is entirely able to suppress their anxieties about the wedding night to come…
On Chesil Beach is another masterwork from Ian McEwan – a story about how the entire course of a life can be changed by a gesture not made or a word not spoken.
'A master feat of concentration in both senses of the word' Peter Kemp, Sunday Times
'It is a masterpiece. The very idea that informs it, fascinating and unfamiliar, is masterly' Karl Miller, TLS
'McEwan’s brilliance as a novelist lies in his ability to isolate discrete moments in life and invest them with incredible significance' Tim Adams, Observer
Author
About Ian McEwan
Ian McEwan is a critically acclaimed author of short stories and novels for adults, as well as The Daydreamer, a children's novel illustrated by Anthony Browne. His first published work, a collection of short stories, First Love, Last Rites, won the Somerset Maugham Award. His novels include The Child in Time, which won the 1987 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award, The Cement Garden, Enduring Love, Amsterdam, which won the 1998 Booker Prize, Atonement and Saturday.
