`Another work with a fiercely evocative sense of English period and Landscape'

`[Exhibits] McEwan's brilliance as a novelist'

"the most anticipated novel of the year"

"McEwan conveys the near-numinous significance of a single moment
with quiet, almost unbearable grace"

A short novel of quite remarkable depth, power and poignancy by a writer at the height of his powers

"A heavenly read"

"A didactic, ironic novella of great accomplishment and calculated ambition. Structurally and linguistically, it is a triumph...intriguingly compassionate"

"It is a measure of McEwan's artistry ... to linger in the recording of sensuous particularities and ... deliver the satisfactions of plot"

"Exquisitely written"

"McEwan shares with his fellow English novelist Jim Crace not only
an interest in history but in finding a style in prose that is slow-moving,
yet compelling, at times stilted and dry, and then suddenly sharp and
precise"

2008-07-17 Sad and Sensitive

A very sad and sensitively written story, a young woman's innocence and naivety was to change the course of a couple's life irretrievably; when all it had needed was a little reassurance from her lover.

Edward and Florence young well educated and both virgins when they married are the protagonists of this emotional novel. It is the early sixties and they were both very much products of the era with all the inhibitions of that time. The swinging sixties had yet to arrive, had it been just a few years later this episode in their lives may have caused life to turn out very out very differently for them.
Younger readers may find it difficult to empathise with the characters as life in the C21st is rather different.

With Chesil Beach Ian McEwan has shown us once again what a talented writer he is. Hardly a novel at 166 pages but not disappointing in that to write more would certainly have spoilt the story.