On Chesil Beach

'tis Ian McEwan's latest book, highly lauded and loudly hyped. Came out in time for the Booker nominations, of course. The shortness of it makes me wonder whether he was trying to get it in for the time of the Booker, and whether he is going to try and write lots of short books to get lots of chances to win. But then he has won the prize earlier for another book, and he probably does not really need to win it again, or the money?

It is absolutely beautifully written, in the style of the time it depicts - 1961, when people were still very conventional, and 1968 obviously had not happened. Funny the book isn't particularly - you tend to feel with the protagonists, though perhaps you could laugh at them a bit, too. The sentence 'this was not a good moment in the history of English cuisine, but no one much minded at the time...' seems to be straight out of Alan Bennett!

Basically the book is about sex, but effectively .... It's also about lack of communication. It's about a young couple, Florence and Edward (those 1940s names) who have just got married and are in a seaside hotel, anticipating the consummation of their marriage - with very different feelings. As the evening wears on the book looks back at their inevitably very different earlier lives (which have not been all that long, obviously - people got married young in those days).

In some ways it reminds of 'Saturday' in that most of the book is set in a very short period of time, with flashbacks. The chap in 'Saturday' is much older, so has more to look back on, and his life has been more complex. Young Florence and Edward are much more virginal (as young graduates were in the early 60s) and their lives have been relatively straightforward, and they have not really experienced many problems in their lives - even Edward's slightly strange mother is seen as rather normal by him (even though there might have been a bit of a case for social services intervention).

It's a nice and nostalgic read, but it's an awfully quick read - I wonder what the word count is of a book that is printed double spaced ... a quick estimate arrives at around 45,000 words. Hmmm. They might be 45,000 beautifully chosen and placed words, but still....