As with my feebleness in reporting back on films I’ve seen recently, I’ve also neglected the printed word. That is to say, I’ve not listed the books I’ve read recently here.
Now this may have little to do with media, TV, radio, or any of the other random things I tend to talk about here, but it serves me quite usefully.
When On Chesil Beach came out in hardback last year, I was reluctant to buy it – mainly because it was so slight, and also because although I can appreciate McEwan as an author (Atonement was wonderful), he can be miss as well as hit. For example, I wasn’t especially enamoured with Saturday, and Amsterdam was very poor. Anyway, I had reasonable hopes for On Chesil Beach which has just reached paperback, but I’m not so sure.
Essentially telling the story of two characters on their wedding night in the mid-sixties, this novella sometimes felt more like a writer’s exercise than a novel. I’d have perhaps been happier if it had been a short story in an anthology. I’m glad it didn’t win the Booker, as I’d have been upset if I’d been another author on the shortlist.
I could believe the characters, growing up in a sheltered post-war period, not being aware of the ways of the world. And their lives felt real as we jumped from one to the other. Yet the ending felt rushed with a five page summary of the rest of their lives where perhaps there was a more interesting story to tell. Perhaps the book as it stands could have been the opening chapter in a larger tale?
It’s a worthwhile book, but it’s just not quite good enough for my liking. Perhaps in his novel, McEwan will write about more than a single day’s events?