{"id":2155,"date":"2008-01-07T20:20:16","date_gmt":"2008-01-07T20:20:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/2008\/01\/on_chesil_beach\/"},"modified":"2008-01-07T20:20:16","modified_gmt":"2008-01-07T20:20:16","slug":"on_chesil_beach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/2008\/01\/on_chesil_beach\/","title":{"rendered":"On Chesil Beach"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/rcm-uk.amazon.co.uk\/e\/cm?t=friday05-21&#038;o=2&#038;p=8&#038;l=as1&#038;asins=0099512793&#038;fc1=000000&#038;lc1=0000ff&#038;bc1=ffffff&#038;npa=1&#038;lt1=_blank&#038;IS1=1&#038;f=ifr&#038;bg1=ffffff\" width=\"120\" height=\"240\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" frameborder=\"0\" align=\"right\"><br \/>\n<\/iframe><br \/>\nAs with my feebleness in reporting back on films I&#8217;ve seen recently, I&#8217;ve also neglected the printed word. That is to say, I&#8217;ve not listed the books I&#8217;ve read recently here.<br \/>\nNow 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.<br \/>\nWhen On Chesil Beach came out in hardback last year, I was reluctant to buy it &#8211; 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&#8217;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&#8217;m not so sure.<br \/>\nEssentially telling the story of two characters on their wedding night in the mid-sixties, this novella sometimes felt more like a writer&#8217;s exercise than a novel. I&#8217;d have perhaps been happier if it had been a short story in an anthology. I&#8217;m glad it didn&#8217;t win the Booker, as I&#8217;d have been upset if I&#8217;d been another author on the shortlist.<br \/>\nI 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?<br \/>\nIt&#8217;s a worthwhile book, but it&#8217;s just not quite good enough for my liking. Perhaps in his novel, McEwan will write about more than a single day&#8217;s events?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As with my feebleness in reporting back on films I&#8217;ve seen recently, I&#8217;ve also neglected the printed word. That is to say, I&#8217;ve not listed the books I&#8217;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, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2155\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}