Kate Langenburg/A&E Groove

Yesterday, I just so happened to finish a book that, I have to admit, really let me down. While combing the shelves for something interesting, I came across known author Ian McEwan. I’ve heard a lot about his works, and have read some of his short stories in various literature classes. Well, let’s give On Chesil Beach a go, then.

My very thought upon finishing the book: glad that’s over! It must be that McEwan tries to think up a new and hip kind of writing. It’s definitely a “different” kind of book. Let me give you the run down…

A couple that has just been married is eating dinner on their wedding night. They are about to consummate their marriage and the point of view skips from one to the other. The woman is insanely nervous because she absolutely abhors any act of intimacy and doesn’t think she’ll be able to have sex with her new husband. The man is excited and ready to finally, after all these years, take his woman into his arms and make love to her.

The time comes…she describes how turned off she is by any thought of sex (again) and he tries to charm her. Really, he ends up “arriving too soon” as they say (and all over her—and before he’s even inside her). She freaks out and runs out of the hotel into the night.

When he approaches her down by the beach afterwards, he is angry that she doesn’t want to make love to  him. She suggests that in order to make their marriage work, that he have relations with other women on the side to fulfill his sexual needs. She says that sex just isn’t something she wants or can handle. He is disgusted. They leave each other. 

Sooooo the baffling part about all this is why Ian McEwan needed 200 pages to tell that story. I mean, I just told it in a few paragraphs. I don’t think I’ve ever read something so long that has said so little before. Sure, some of his writing is a bit lovely, but on the whole, I wasn’t impressed. After reading reviews of this book by other people, I just don’t get it. They love it, they cry, they laugh, it’s incredible!

I will be staying far away from Chesil Beach.

book by Ian McEwan

annotation by Ted Chiles

Time should move equally. When the narrative shifts from front story to back-story and then returns, an appropriate amount of time should have elapsed in the front story. Not equal chronological time, but equal narrative time. The alternative is the perception that the characters in the front story have been frozen mid-step waiting for us with glasses raised or forks poised. This equality of narrative time is not maintained in On Chesil Beach, yet we are not thrown out of the narrative. Ian McEwan uses an omniscient narrator to create space in the front story for his extended movements to back-story.

McEwan tells the life stories of a young couple, Florence and Edward, on their wedding night. He focuses on the how life can be altered, not only by what is said and done, but by the choice not to say or do what should be said or done. He uses back-story to explain the reasons of inaction.

Signaling the dominant voice, McEwan begins the novel with the omniscient narrator: “They were young, educated, and both virgins on this, their wedding night and they lived in a time when conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible. But it is never easy,” (1). Once the narrator’s voice and command are firmly established, the book shifts to a scene where the young couple is eating in their room: “The formal meal began, as many did, with a slice of melon decorated by a single glazed cherry,” (5). Time slows in the front story as we learn of his sexual anxiety: “His specific worry, based on one unfortunate experience, was overexcitement … ” (8), and her revulsion at the prospect of intercourse: “She simply did not want to be ‘entered’ or ‘penetrated’ … ” (10). We return to the meal: “They ate the melon in less than two minutes… ” (13), where resumption of the front story is marked by a space break. The exploration of their sexual anxieties has taken two minutes in the front- story and six pages of back-story.

Why doesn’t this inconsistency disconnect the narrative? Does the omniscient narrator, always present, with a dominating voice hold the narrative together? The story is largely interpreted and told by a narrator who is not a character reflecting back on his or her life. This choice of POV allows for a different sense of time because a story told instead of shown, is freed from the restraint of the internal logic of scenes.

Scenes exist but even then the characters’ actions are interpreted for the reader: “But the hand that held the wineglass trembled as he struggled to contain his sudden happiness and exaltation,” (14). Two pages of scene again shift into back-story without a space break: “Edward had a degree … ” (15), and returns to scene, delineated by a space break, when the rest of the meal is served: “The waiters were arriving with their plates of beef, … ” (21), six pages later.
In On Chesil Beach, time belongs to the narrator, not the characters. A story mostly told, not shown, has the freedom to move about time because we mark our movement by the voice of the narrator. When does time stop? When are characters frozen helpless and unable to move? It is when a voice, not of the world but above it, comments on the scene below. This we can accept because with omniscient comes such authority.

Often the first piece of advice given to the novice writer is to show not tell. Later, the writer is told that in fiction you can do anything as long as it works. The omniscient narrator, in the hands of an accomplished writer, works. Time can stand still.

I remember watching colleagues who’d started their PhDs before me, going into their final year and progressing through their writing up.  I remember noticing that formerly perfectly sane, entirely calm and collected individuals, seemed to be going a bit potty.  This both astonished me and worried me – if these very clever, studious, well organised and entirely capable individuals were starting to lose it under the pressure of writing up, what on earth would it do to me??  Well, now I understand and empathise entirely!  I feel like I’m going slightly mad, as the eloquent Freddie Mercury put it.  It’s finally happened.  Here I am, half way through my writing up.  One supervisor left me to take up a job abroad, a couple of months after I started writing up and then, just the other week his replacement has announced he is departing for foreign climes come January.  I should be *almost* done by January, but I don’t think I’ll be finished, unfortunately.  I don’t really want to be finishing by correspondence but I’ll have no option and I suppose, at least, I will be almost done – I hope.

My responses to the continued pressure is odd.  I remember this year in March various colleagues and friends talking about their final projects and dissertations and the two weeks or so of stress this caused.  I feel like the writing up period is an entire year of this kind of pressure – and that starts to wear a little thin!  My work-guilt has reached and all-time high.  I don’t feel I can do anything else that is not work.  And, when I do, the guilt gnaws another chunk out of my brain, from my very soul!  I am slowly being eaten, consumed and digested by this ‘final project’.  I have slowly become rattier and rattier – my patience is thin, my ability to relax is nil, my capacity for giving myself entirely to others is utterly diminished.  I never feel like I’m having a proper conversation any more because my mind is always elsewhere.  I’m permanently distracted, always thinking of what I need to add to this chapter, or a lead I should really follow up and check.  I must appear extremely rude to other people – they must think I’m not listening to them, my vacant, far-away gaze a tell-tale sign of my lack of interest in their conversation.  But I can’t help it – I just always have something else on my mind – the same thing, that constantly requires my time, all of it.

I remember when studying for my finals, my parents were redecorating the hallway and kept insisting that I participate in this joyous family activity, that it was essential for me to hang wallpaper and paint ceilings.  I was in a constant fury with them at their apparent complete lack of ability to understand the amount of work I had to do.  Nobody in my family had attended university before – what would they know about finals?  My Dad was constantly cracking jokes which seemed to me to be undermining and belittling the very thing I was striving to achieve and which was so very important to me.  I should think that in fact they were trying to distract me, help me relax and take my mind off the finality of the exams which would decide my path in the future.  However, in my moments of pressure I was entirely devoid of humour, grumpy and fed up with being told how and when to study, when I should take breaks, when and how I should relax and this resulted in a number of terse conversations.  I was so glad when it was all over and I cannot wait for that feeling again.  All that is propelling me forward at the moment is the prospect of a trip to Australia next year and the moment when I wake up and don’t have to think about The Thesis.

I have been trying to find ways to push The Thesis out of my head.  I tried reading but recently, I don’t seem to be able to concentrate on it – probably because The Thesis is stuck on my brain and won’t let me read.  I can’t read mindlessly – when I read, I am always reading for meaning, for connections, intertextuality – I can’t do that with The Thesis on my mind, it seems.  This strikes me as strange since, in moments of great crisis, I normally have a voracious appetite for reading.  I remember becoming completely addicted to reading after the death of my best friend.  I spent all day and all night reading, novel after novel. I would do nothing else.  I went on holiday for a week with my parents to a small island where there is nothing to do.  I had a book but at the speed I was reading, it didn’t last long.  I hadn’t brought anything else to read and literally broke down when I realised it.  I finished the book while lying in bed one night, realised I hadn’t another to start, and burst into tears.  Suddenly, all the thoughts and memories I’d be reading to exclude came crashing back in and I couldn’t stop them.  I was inconsolable and ran to the newsagent in a desperate attempt to find something – they had nothing.  In the end my Dad came up with the goods and gave me something about Russians and tractors to read – did the job.  I did the same while The Boy’s Dad was dying of cancer – I read and read and read.  And got faster and faster – I read On Chesil Beach (an excellent book I’d recommend) in one day, whilst sitting by his bedside as his breath, shallow and sporadic, indicated his impending passing.  But suddenly I can’t read!!  In the moment when I most need to get away from this one thing, I can’t do it with books!  Instead, I’m addicted to American TV series.  So far a (very supportive and important) friend has supplied me with Damages, Veronica Mars, Boston Legal, Studio 60, Dexter, Arrested Development, and True Blood.  Normally I watch very, very little television – it rarely interests me.  However, suddenly, I’m addicted to these series!  I *have* to have more and I panic when I run out!  Of the series I’d watch – Damages is excellent.  It’s a terse, tightly plotted, intense legal drama with twists and turns that keep you on the edge of your seat, and excellent performances by the likes of Tate Donovan, Ted Danson and Glenn Close – if you haven’t seen it already, get it; you will not regret it for an instant.  Boston Legal is brilliant – its 5 seasons are hilarious, emotional, touching and offer very well written drama – I was very sad when I reached the end of it.  The Shat (William Shatner) and James Spader make an incredible partnership.  It took me a little longer to get into True Blood as I’m not much of a sci-fi fan, and haven’t really bothered with vampire shows before.  This show is, almost literally, vampires and sex.  That’s about the size of it – it’s very raunchy, slick and cool, but it’s also compelling.  It also took me a while to get into Dexter as I struggled to engage with the characters but, as with many TV series, after you’ve watched 3 or 4 episodes, you’re hooked.  Dexter season 2 was sensational!  I think what’s got me hooked with these is that they involve absolutely no effort from me (aside from keeping my eyes open, which has recently become something of a task).  All I have to do is follow the plot.  Also, they all last only an hour – so that’s all I have to concentrate for.  Finally, they’re all completely removed from the real world and have nothing to do with books – that, I think, is the key.

So, if I appear distracted, zone out while you’re talking to me, seem to be entirely consumed and obsessed by this silly essay I’ve been writing for the past 4 years, please forgive me – normal service will resume in approximately four months.  I promise.

Ok, wrote this a few days ago, but was about to finish the last book and wanted to include it.  BOOOOKS!

The Gathering – Anne Enright

Ok, I’m not going to lie, the first 3/4 of this book was boring.  I actually threw is on the floor on multiple occasions.  Not a ringing endorsement, but the last 1/4 of the book made up for it.  ALmost.

It’s an inner journey, and by that I mean it is the story of what 39-year-old Veronica remembers about her family’s history.  She is one of 9, or ten, kids in the Hegarty family. As she tells the story of her childhood in pieces, each person’s character changes from good, to bad and back… each memory casts a different tint to the stories.

But you don’t figure out why everyone is so messed up until the end, see?  So it is brilliant, with great prose and interesting people, but a 3/4 boring book isn’t one I can fully recommend. At least it was a quick read.

Next.

Darkmans – Nicola Barker Um.  an 850 page book?  Been a while since I picked up one of those… but it came highly recommended so, what the heck! There are about 6 or 7 characters in this book that blunder their way haphazardly through a few chaotic days where nothing makes any sense. It seems like they are, at random times, possessed by an evil spirit, “The Darkmans”.   (Apparently the spirit of a medieval court jester who liked burning people alive, he seems to inhabit each character making them do horrible things.)

Artistically, but annoyingly, the book  omits certain scenes which makes everything else seem even more bizarre and inexplicable. And the end seems a bit unsatisfactory, explaining little of the reason behind everything.

That said, the  book is inventive, witty and well staged, and despite their crazy behavior, each character is charming and lovable.  Until they killed the cat.  Yup.

Next.

On Chesil Beach – Ian McEwan

This was another Booker shortlisted book, and it was incredible.  a newly wed couple is having their wedding night in the early 1960s, and after the ceremony, they’re each alternately eager and incredibly scared to have sex for the first time.  The story is from both points of view, rampant with flashbacks that describe their histories and relationship.

And of course, it’s a disaster.  But the two characters are so intense and easy to understand that it’s like living through it yourself (again.  seriously?  remember how awkward your first time was?  don’t lie.)  but with a little more understanding.

A definite recommendation.

Bad Monkeys – Matt Ruff

Holy Crap this book was good!  Jane Charlotte is being analysed by a psychiatrist because, while being questioned for murder, she claimed to be working for a clandestine organization that is devoted to crime prevention.  She worked in the Department for the Final Disposition of Irredeemable Persons, also known as Bad Monkeys.  Basically, once a person has been deemed truly, irrevocably evil, she and her compatriots would sweep in and get rid of them.

Sounds like a pretty rad book already, right?

But as she tells her story, and the details come out, and it becomes impossible to tell if she’s crazy or not, and later, if she’s good or bad.  It’s exciting and funny and there are vigilantes who dress as scary clowns and who kill people with “natural causes” guns.

It’s not the most literary book ever, but man is it good.

My family took our annual beach vacation last week, so I loaded up on a bunch of books and prepared to while away the week under an umbrella. Which, for the most part, I did. In fact, I read everything that I took with me.  Really, it’s hard to beat a week at the beach with good company, good weather, a pretty beach, and a stack of books.

I read some really fun books, like Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer by Warren St. John and two collections of essays, Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant (about food and cooking for one, starting with the eponymous essay by the wonderful Laurie Colwin) and Altared (about conflicted feelings on having a wedding). I finally got the chance to read the much-hyped American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld (liked it, thought it was better than either of her earlier novels and was disappointed when it ended). I even read a few Serious Literary Things like On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan and Old School by Tobias Wolff.  I had been disturbed yet enthralled by McEwan’s Atonement, so I was expecting a good read from On Chesil Beach and was not disappointed. I was completely captivated by Old School, and not just because it took some serious shots at the ghastly Ayn Rand. Why have I never read any Tobias Wolff before? I must rectify that and soon.

But one book that I packed left me cold. Actually, it started out promisingly. How to Cook a Tart by Nina Killham is sort of  a culinary mystery/chick lit book, which is the sort of thing that I adore for lightweight reading. You know, like the Diane Mott Davidson mystery novels about Goldy the Caterer in Colorado. And I was happy to read luscious descriptions of delicious food prepared with lots and lots of butter and good wine, and I was amused by the characters (a family with a frustrated husband, a wife who is a chef and cookbook author and a teenage daughter and the mistress of the husband). Except then the book took a scary turn from fun to just plain sick and bizarre, and not in a good way. I’ll spoil it for you, since you’re not going to read it. A neighbor kills the mistress sort of by accident and leaves her body in the family’s kitchen. So the wife (the chef) dismembers the woman’s body with her chainsaw so she can dispose of the evidence because she thought her husband killed her and she didn’t want to live without her husband. Yes, you read that correctly. She dismembered the woman’s body with her chainsaw.

Then the two of them go off to dispose of the body in various trash bags while the teenaged daughter feeds the head of the dead woman to her snake so that no one finds out what happened. Um. Um. Um, hello? Genre shift? Complete whiplash? Way to ruin my buttery food buzz with some graphic murder and dismemberment better suited to a true crime book. And it wasn’t even funny in a sick way a la Hannibal Lecter. It was just…gross. And it annoyed me because it ruined the rest of the book, which had been fun. Grr. Well, I only paid two bucks for it. And if there was only one dud in a stack of eight or nine books, that’s not such a bad average.

So now I’m back, and I’m re-reading Julie and Julia in preparation for seeing the new movie that just came out. At least in that book, the only things being dismembered are raw chickens and a few lobsters.

Just for fun, lets see what some people cite as the definition of ‘literary’ (The quote is from Wikipedia.):

Literary fiction is a term that has come into common usage since around 1970, principally to distinguish serious fiction (that is, work with claims to literary merit) from the many types of genre fiction and popular fiction (i.e., paraliterature). In broad terms, literary fiction focuses more on style, psychological depth, and character, whereas mainstream commercial fiction (the page-turner) focuses more on narrative and plot.

Which is an easy way of saying thast the writers of literary fiction are too fucking lazy to come up with a decent story. Added to the thin scope for original ideas, the characters in most literary novels are miserable bastards who I would gladly see suffer more than they already are. I’ll throw out a celebrated example of a literary novel so that you might get a better idea of why the snobbery of a small clique of writers irritates me so much – On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan. It centres on a pair of highly unlikeable individuals whose sexual life is so antiquated that it isn’t even slightly believable.

And the English professors couldn’t wait to get the circle-jerk started. The grubby fingers of quasi-intellectuals are all over this book, staining its’ pages.

I’ve been here before, though the subject was ‘high art’ rather than literary novels. It’s too easy for the book snobs to dismiss something which is ‘commercial’, or ‘popular’, while being completely ignorant of the need for solid A-B-C plotting and fresh ideas. When I started to defend the pop-art movement (including comic-books, graffitti and tattoos) I was rounded on by art snobs (equally as boorish as book snobs) who cited numerous ill-founded grounds for ‘high art’ being better than the more accesable art which permeates our lives.

I’ll re-heat some of that argument here, though not in detail.

Firstly, I’ll look at the hypocrisy which starts up every time a ‘hot’ creator is thrust into the limelight. It could be Damien Hirst or Jack Vettriano, Jamie Hewlett or Banksy, the accusations of ‘cheating’, or ‘being shallow’ crop up sooner or later. Damien Hirst’s use of assistants draws on a long tradition of artists using help. Most of the Old Masters hanging in art galleries across the world have brush-strokes upon their canvases which were placed there by apprentices to the credited artists.
It doesn’t matter that Vettriano may or may not have used an art book as a reference in his painting. All of the great painters traced. Take a look at x-rays of paintings known for their ‘greatness’ and you will see reworkings and sketches underneath, so there is no doubt that the work was done and redone over a period of time. It was a standard way of working, though modern artists are criticised for their adherence to the truth of painting.

Back to books, where this post began, and I’ll lay out the reason why we have fucked up our perception of ‘great works’. It’s all connected, and it’s all down to a change in culture beginning with the advent of mass paperbacks. They needed some titles which held universal appeal, so the publishers picked books they could sell. Seeing certain Victorian writers as being elevated from their contemporaries is a fallacy that has skewed thinking for decades. Dickens was a hack. Conan-Doyle was a hack. The balance has been tilted too far towards the ‘important’, that most people don’t even realize that the shit being peddled as new literary classics have no real depth.

Start looking for a new way of thinking, ’cause the old ideas are all wrong…

I’ve just finished listening to Prayers for Sale and there was an interview with the author immediately following.  Ian McEwan did the same on the recording of On Chesil Beach. The interviewer says to  Sandra Dallas ‘There is a lot about quilting in the book. Did that have some special meaning?’ ‘Why, yes, the book is about friendship and women’s lives and quilting is involved in that.’ Or some such, I am paraphrasing. Quilting is A Symbol an’ don’ you furgit it!  By the end of the book I was as tired of Symbols as if Ah had jes wawked up the mountain to the berrah patch – and then to have the author tell me it all had Deep Meaning…! I didn’t throw my player across the room but I did hit the off button right smartly!

On Chesil Beach is about a newly wed working class English couple who have a bad time on their first tries at sex, both being ignorant and too abashed to talk about it – behave like idiots afterward and live unhappily ever after. Well written but left a very sour taste. Then the author comes on and tells the interviewer that it represents the human condition, that the beach, being too gravelly to walk or sit on, is appropriate, blah, blah. Oh, please – it was a story, somewhat interesting, but not the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.*

Just another dishrag (contact me privately for the secret symbols  hidden in the design:

cotton dishcloth knitted in basket stitch

cotton dishcloth, knitted in basket stitch, wrong side

* The answer is 42.

During my weekend getaway I bought several books at Half Priced Books. Most of them were duds in my opinion. But I read this book

in one sitting, from cover to cover in about 3 hours or so. I could not put it down. So I thought I’d write a little about it. This author also wrote Atonement, which was made into a movie. I can’t really see this book working as a movie.

On Chesil Beach is pretty much about things left unsaid and the consequences of not telling others how we feel. It is also about unmet expectations. But that message is all wrapped up in a story of newlyweds encountering each other for the first time on their wedding night. What should have been a sweet first encounter turned into something else entirely. If reading or talking about sex makes you uncomfortable, this might not be the best book for you but then again, it might. The author chose to get almost the juicy parts and then takes you back to when the couple first met. It’s like this tug of war between the mundane and the…um…not so mundane. I have to admit that I kind of glossed over some of the stuff that didn’t seem all that “important”. The tension while reading this book really helps you understand the tension the characters must be feeling. If you choose to read it, tough out the seemingly “boring” parts. I plan on reading it again and paying more attention to the smaller details.

This is a beautiful story of love that should have been. Reading this book will really make you think about how vital it is to share yourself wholly with those that you love, especially your spouse.

84. On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan (2007)

Read By: the author.
Length: 4h 30min, although that includes a ~30 min interview with the author (208 pages)

Genre: Literary Fiction

Started: 02 July 2009
Finished: 06 July 2009

Where did it come from? The library.
Why do I have it? I really enjoyed Atonement and wanted to read more of McEwan’s work.

Let’s talk about sex,
love, feelings, and marriage. Or,
in this case… let’s not.

Summary: It’s 1962, and Florence and Edward have just gotten married, and are on their honeymoon. Both are virgins, both are unsure about what happens next, both have wildly divergent opinions about sex (Edward being eager; Florence being totally disinterested and disgusted, but still feeling a sense of obligation). Neither of them, however, is able to communicate their feelings about the matter to the other, and so their wedding night quickly spirals further and further into awkwardness, isolation, and unhappiness.

Review: I’m having a hard time reviewing this book. On the one hand, I understand that it was meant to be more of a literary exercise, and on technical grounds, it succeeds wonderfully – it’s elegantly crafted and flawlessly written. On the other hand, I didn’t particularly enjoy listening to it, in large part because I wasn’t in the mood for “literary exercise” – I wanted a story.

It’s also very hard to enjoy a story when you find both characters to be obnoxious twits who you just want to shake by the shoulders while yelling “Just TALK TO HIM/HER, already, GOD!” And yes, I get that the fact that they couldn’t talk to each other was kind of the point of the book, but that didn’t stop it from being annoying. The resultant awkwardness was certainly recognizable (how often do we really talk totally openly about sex, even nowadays?), and familiar enough to make reading about it uncomfortable. While literature that makes you uncomfortable certainly has its place, and there are certainly tons of folks out there who can and do appreciate this book for its meditative musings and meticulous tone, it just wasn’t what I wanted to be listening to. 2.5 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: I can recommend this book for aspiring writers as an excellent look at the process of crafting story, scene, characters and conflict. For someone who’s just looking to get lost in an enjoyable read, however, they’d be best served looking elsewhere.

This Review on LibraryThing | This Book on LibraryThing | This Book on Amazon

Other Reviews: Everyday Reads, Caribousmom, Boston Bibliophile, 1 More Chapter, Everyday I Write the Book, Book Nook Club, Leafing Through Life, ReadingAdventures, BookLit, Reading Matters, Asylum, Vulpes Libris, Stuck in a Book, My Fluttering Heart
Have you reviewed this book? Leave a comment with the link and I’ll add it in.

First Line: They were young, uneducated, and both virgins on this, their wedding night, and they lived in a time when conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible. But it is never easy.

Alles zit ook tegen

Florence en Edward zitten op de avond van hun huwelijksnacht in een hotel aan Chesil Beach. Beiden hebben enigszins overspannen verwachtingen van de aanstaande nacht maar kunnen daar niet met elkaar over praten. De tijd zit hen simpelweg tegen. Ian McEwan confronteert ons met het jaar 1962 toen jonge mensen op een compleet andere wijze invulling gaven aan hun leven. “They live on the verge of a changing time”. Zij leefden ergens op de grens van de benauwde jaren ’50 en de omwentelingen van de jaren ’60. De onvermijdelijke afstand tot het verleden en de personages wordt eruit gelicht. Dat is een van de elementen die de tijd tot een centraal thema maakt in deze roman van McEwan. 

            Aan de oppervlakte is het leven simpel voor de twee geliefden. Het hele boek straalt een sfeer uit van een eeuwig zonnig zomers Engeland. Het is een tijd waarin alles nog langzaam voortschrijdt. De gemoedsrust van de beide geliefden is echter veel stormachtiger dan men op het eerste gezicht zou denken. Het perspectief wisselt van Florence naar Edward maar altijd is er de almachtige onbekende verteller. Gedachtes en handelingen worden zo in een zekere stroom van onvermijdelijkheid geplaatst.

            Florence is een keurig, verlegen enigszins frigide meisje. Haar liefde voor Edward is puur maar ze heeft moeite haar irrationele angst voor seksualiteit te onderdrukken. Het liefst blijft ze stilstaan: “All these years she had lived in isolation within herself and, strangely, from herself, never wanting or daring to look back”. Edward is een bedeesde maar ook krachtige jongen. De zenuwen voor de huwelijksnacht komen bij hem voort uit het feit dat hij het te graag wil en bang is iets fout te doen: “.. all he wanted was forward movement”.  Zijn Florence en Edward geen archetypes voor een tijdsperiode? Het benauwde, behoudende karakter van Florence past moeiteloos in het clichébeeld van de jaren ’50. De dynamische, positieve Edward gaat moeiteloos mee in de jaren ’60.  Hun muzieksmaak illustreert het geheel nog beter. Zij speelt klassieke muziek op professioneel niveau, hij probeert haar te interesseren in rock-’n-roll en jazz.

Het drama wordt licht beschreven door middel van deze verstilde personages.  Hun levens nemen een beslissende wending tijdens die ene nacht. Door middel van flashbacks wordt beschreven hoe de personages hier terecht zijn gekomen. Bijna wordt de lezer door een vlaag van medelijden overvallen. Welk een braafheid en onwetendheid heeft Florence en Edward hier gebracht.

In het laatste hoofdstuk neemt het verhaal een wending.  Een dergelijke wrange omwenteling zagen we al vaker in de boeken van McEwan, zoals in Atonement. Op een ietwat overdreven manier laat hij zo wel het echte leven zien. De jeugdige onschuld van de twee maakt plaats voor bittere teleurstelling. Het is jammer dat de schrijver ervoor gekozen heeft om in het laatste hoofdstuk als het ware met sprongen door de tijd heen te gaan. De serene sfeer die in de rest van het boek overheerste wordt zo doorbroken. Toch dringt zo op de laatste pagina de ware pijn tot de lezer door. Het wordt duidelijk dat naast de door de tijd opgelegde normen er ook altijd een vrije keuze is, een eigen karakter. McEwan leidt ons in één keer langs dit grote drama. Het verhaal beslaat 166 pagina’s en het is aan te raden om deze in één keer te lezen. Het valt niet te ontkennen dat het een prachtige literaire beschrijving is maar deze blijft ook afstandelijk. Aan het einde is het goed om je af te vragen of het verhaal je wel echt geraakt heeft.

Ian McEwan writes like a mofo. I read Amsterdam and liked it and forgot most of it a while ago. More recently I read On Chesil Beach and started to get a glimmer of just how high a caliber writer McEwan is. He may not know exactly how the brain works, but he sure seems to know an awful lot about what goes on in there.

It’s good to have another Large British Writer around. It was Martin Amis for me for awhile, but hasn’t been since he turned serious, and I never have gotten any hooks into Salman Rushdie. Saw him speak once, in Bozeman, Montana, a decent chunk of the downtown of which kind of randomly blew up today, but never read much

I went to hear McEwan read at UT last night. He’s on some sort of a tour, reading from a yet-to-be-published novel set to take place in some sort of global warming context. He’s taking pains to clarify that he’s not writing a novel “about” global warming, which anyone who’s read him will already understand. He talks about his science jones and the literary argument he’s been promoting lately between reason and intuition as the alternating drivers of novelistic plots. He thinks reason’s unfairly underrated. Eh.

He said some very funny things about the middle-aged male’s impulse to diet that I’m really, really, really sorry to relate to as much as I do.

He’s also got a recent profile in the February 23  New Yorker, wherein the story is told of his failure to get in at Cambridge in part because he couldn’t discuss Macbeth, because he hadn’t, umm, read it. Love that.

Mofo can write regardless. And he’s a funny reader, polished comic timing. He wore a thin v-neck sweater the color of the sky on the Chesil Beach cover. They couldn’t get the sound right so he spoke without a mike. I don’t know where he’s going, but I gather he’ll be doing the same thing in some other towns. I recommend it, if you have a chance.

Wat een pracht schrijver is Ian McEwan toch. De Cementen Tuin was intrigerend, On Chesil Beach was ontroerend. Nu lees ik De Brieven in Berlijn. Elke avond voor het slapen gaan, tijdens het ontbijt (omdat ik te lui ben om de krant van beneden te halen) en in de bus.

Tot nu toe vind ik dit het meest prachtig: Leonard is een Britse jongeman die tijdens de Koude Oorlog in Berlijn werkt. Hij bestudeerd bedragingssystemen van de Russen zodat het Westen het Oosten kan gaan afluisteren (ofzoiets, want het Westen lustte er ook wel pap van,qua afluisteren). In ieder geval: Onze Leonard ontmoet in een bar een jonge vrouw, Maria (Als het boek verfilmd wordt, moet zij worden gespeeld door Nina Hoss). Ze worden verliefd (uiteraard). Ze gaan met elkaar naar bed. Voor Leonard is het de eerste keer met een vrouw. Hij beleeft zoveel emoties tegelijk, dat hij het niet meer aan kan naar Maria te kijken en dan, en ik citeer letterlijk:

I’ve not been slack, I’ve just been away. Which means that I have a lot of culture to catch up on.

Last Sunday I popped up to London originally intending to stay for a couple of days. However, I ended up staying for a whole week. On the Sunday, I met my brother at The Effra pub in Brixton to watch Arsenal draw 0-0 with Spurs due to an incorrect decision made by the ref to rule out a perfectly valid Arsenal goal and the sheer idiocy of Emmanuel Eboue, who it seems is doing everything he can to elevate himself to the status of one of the worst Arsenal players in history. I’m already mentioning him in the same breath as Gus Ceasar and Eddie McGoldrick. After that, we went back to my brother’s and I played on a Wii for the first time. I thought I’d hate it but it was good, although, as with most computer games, I was predictably shit.

At some point too I finished reading On Chesil Beach by Iain McEwan. I’ve read some ace books this year but I think this one tops them. The ‘action’ takes place over an hour or two on the wedding night of a couple married in the late 50s. There’s very little actual dialogue, mostly just the two main characters’ thoughts. So it’s not really anything like anything else I’ve read before. This, and the fact that it was so tense and so engaging, I think is amazing. It was completely absorbing and I’d have said it was perfect if it wasn’t for the last chapter, which seemed completely unnecessary and jolted really badly with the rest of the book. The use of the phrase “Internet shopping” was particularly upsetting. But really, all things considered, this is a minor gripe. I must read more of his books.

In the evening I watched a programme called Undercover Princes, which was hilarious although quite obviously shit. Glad I watched it but won’t be doing so again. Also, they subtitled the men speaking when it was really very clear exactly what they were saying. Just because it was spoken with an African or an Indian accent doesn’t mean my ears can’t take it. I suspect the person who made these decisions is the sort of person who refuses to deal with people in Indian call centres, because ‘they can’t understand them’.

On Monday, went to Battersea Arts Centre, mainly because Lisa was doing her storytelling thing there as part of a 4 day event curated by the comedian, Josie Long. We saw a thing called Storytelling Club, which involves a compere and four comedians, yep, telling stories. Essentially, it was just stand-up. Actually, it’s the way I believe stand-up should be or the way stand-up is at it’s best (more of this later). Funny stories. I can’t remember who played or who was good but the whole experience was pleasant and amusing. After this, we went and recorded a, erm, story with Lisa, although I’m fairly sure it was just me waffling and giggling and not really saying anything of consequence. Like this blog. And then I drew a picture of an avocado on a display because it asked me to draw the best thing I’d seen that day. I’d had a bad day and the avocado was a treat and tasted incredible. I love avocados.

The next night, we watched the film Sophie’s Choice, a film that won a lot of awards back in the day. I found it to be watchable fare, but completely unfocussed. I couldn’t really work out what the main story was and the whole thing just seemed a bit of a mess at times. However, Meryl Streep is amazing in it. Well done Meryl.

Went back to Battersea Arts centre another day. This time we didn’t see an actual performance but it was still brilliant! Firstly, we discovered a hidden room in a basement with loads of crazy stuff in. Then I learnt how to knit. It’s completely impossible and I cocked it up about a million times. Then, we made a physical representation of a tube station name out of felt and fabric and stuff. I went for Burnt Oak and made a rather pleasing tree on fire. Although as a rather overly critical man did point out, the picture I’d made was really Burning Oak. I drew a picture of my own face, flew a paper plane, discovered another hidden room and played and lost at Battleships.

On Friday, we tried to go and see the exhibition at Tate Britain but misread the website and got there too late. So, instead we went for a walk by the river to the Houses Of Common and down to the Tate Modern. Had a nice time there. Favourite thing I saw was a bunch of Soviet Communism posters. I liked their style, even if their politic system did go a bit wrong. Due to a lack of dvd player, earlier on we went to some charity shops and bought some videos. For £1 we got a Croatian film called Black Cat White Cat and Derek And Clive Get The Horn. £1! VHS is the way forward, I’m tellin’ ya’. Black Cat White Cat was a fun, throwaway tale about, well, a bunch of stuff really. Er, a tall guy marrying a small woman, some gangsters, a loser type bloke with a moustache, a young chap who wants to marry a girl but gets married off, some messed up weddings and some dead old men who get frozen to stop them going off. It was fun. Derek And Clive Get The Horn is a film documenting Peter Cook and Dudley Moore record some sketches for some ultra-offensive records they made in the late 70s. Didn’t watch it all but I’ve heard most of it before. It can still make you laugh like a drain but there are bits that are a bit uncomfortable and there were long periods with no laughs at all.

The next day, we went to the Wellcome Collection to see their War & Medicine exhibition. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t that excited by the prospect of it but it was really good. There was a lot of grim stuff to look at and some really interesting bits to read. I particularly enjoyed the British 70s information film on what to do in a nuclear attack. It was frightening in a weird, cartoony way. Afterwards, we went to The Lexington to see some bands. The night was curated by Fanfarlo and to be honest, they were the only band worth talking about. Dunno who the others were but none of them did anything for me. However, Fanfarlo were excellent, even if they’ve clearly been listening to a lot of Arcade Fire over the last few years.

The next day went for food at a place called Lost Society in Clapham. Really nice building with loads of different spaces. I had a chicken roast, which was pretty nice considering roasts from pubs are usually a bit guff. Best of all though was the cocktail I had, something involving Sailor Jerry’s, strawberries and mint. Mmmm. Afterwards, we went to see some comedians I’d never heard of at The Exhibit in Balham. Now, my advice is DO NOT go to The Exhibit in Balham and definitely DO NOT go there to see comedy. Firstly, the beer there stank. It was watery nonsense. Even the wine tasted watered down. Surely people don’t water down wine? The comedy. Oh. My. Good. Lord. There were about 8 comedians and they ranged from shit to fucking awful to tedious to inexplicable. So, so bad. It’s weird when you see something like that. You end up drawing positives in places that would usually be a negative. I mean, the compere was OK. You know, he didn’t make me want to curl up and die when he was on. And ONE of the comedians had a passable level of professionalism to his act, even if all of his jokes centred around the seemingly hilarious notion that he was black and the audience were all white. Elsewhere, there was a man who talked at 1000 miles an hour, which was incredible to watch. He’s obviously got a real talent. However, he’d forgotten to actually add any vaguely funny lines into his act. Another woman just waffled inanely about her cat to the point that I just couldn’t care enough to concentrate on her stupid words and the final man just seemed to come and say some stuff he’d done lately. I really couldn’t tell if it was meant to be funny or not. Oh, and another man thought that if he told stories placing him masturbating in unusual places, that would be enough to have us all chuckling into our watery pints. Sadly, for some of the fucknuts in the audience, this was true. Not for me though.

After a tiring day at school, I arrived home to find out some very good news. My (substitute) teacher from HS and very good friend Ms. Aileesa Lim just won this week’s Fully Booked Spotlight Review with her review on Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach. Congratulations Ms Lim. Honestly, I’m quite proud of this teacher of mine. Back in High School, she was never my teacher for class though she substituted for a number of my classes when some of my English teachers weren’t available. She is a wonderful educator and friend, and someone you can honestly talk to about things, without fear of communication problems. Ms Lim is a wonderful speaker and writer, and I believe she has the talent to make it big someday.

Being a writer, Ms Lim has written numerous reviews for books and magazines during her spare time. She even got picked to help review movies for this movie awarding ceremony (one of the more famous ones though the name escapes me now) sometime last year (or was it last last year). Among all the writers, only a few of them were picked and she was the only Filipino, and if I remember correctly, the only Asian. I am quite proud of this teacher of mine, really. What makes me even more happy that despite this being a small thing, Ms Lim will be able to buy more of the books she loves to read. She always has interesting insights to her blog entries, her reviews, and her takes on everyday experiences that really makes her an excellent teacher, even outside of the classroom.

Congratulations Ms. Lim.

 Every year, Linda compiles a list of the books we’ve read in the previous year, in case our memories and notes are faulty when someone asks, “What have you been reading lately?”

In alphabetical order: (Reviews and descriptions are from various sources.)

• Almost Moon (Alice Sebold) Explores the complex ties between mothers and daughters, wives and lovers, the meaning of devotion, and the fine line between love and hate.
• American Lightning: Terror, Mystery, The Birth of Hollywood, and the Crime of the Century (Howard Blum) The October 1910 bombing of the offices of the Los Angeles Times, which killed 21 people, seemed to portend that the vicious battle between capital and labor would escalate into the United States’ second civil war. Howard Blum, bestselling author and contributing editor for Vanity Fair, examines the crime and its aftermath from the perspective of three legendary men of the period, each of whom would “permanently transform the nature of American thought, politics, celebrity, and culture.” The first, detective William Burns, led a painstaking investigation that revealed a conspiracy by the Iron Workers Union to set off bombs around the country — the Times was targeted for its fierce anti-labor campaign. The second, famed attorney Clarence Darrow, reluctantly agreed to represent the defendants despite his belief that an acquittal would be impossible; in the low point of a distinguished career, Darrow, seen passing money to an associate who then bribed a juror, was subsequently tried for jury tampering. The third, director D. W. Griffith, had no real connection to the case, but Blum argues that his epic Birth of a Nation was informed by the events in L.A. While he doesn’t provide ample evidence for that assertion, Griffith’s inclusion still seems somehow fitting: Blum’s true-crime drama plays out like an old movie, complete with complex heroes, mustachioed villains, and lusty dames. It doesn’t always read like history, but it is great fun nonetheless. –Barbara Spindel
• Candy Girl (Diablo Cody) Why would a healthy, college-educated young woman start stripping for a living, when she could work in a nice, clean office?
• Desert of the Heart (Jane Rule) is a 1964 lesbian-themed novel, which was adapted into the 1985 film, “Desert Hearts.”
• The Double Bind (Chris Bohjalian)  The idea of the invented self hovers over F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.   Jay Gatsby, we remember, begins an unpromising life as James Gatz and is murdered for a crime he does not commit. Bohjalian, too, is interested in the gray area between hope and delusion, in how people are shaped by the events of their lives and the efforts they make to hold the self inviolable against fate and harm. As Nick Carraway concludes, the past is powerfully present in the future, and Laurel’s investigations into Bobbie Crocker’s life lead her inevitably into her own history. Some readers may reach the end and feel blindsided rather than enlightened, but The Double Bind describes just how circuitous that inescapable journey can be. 
• Ghostwalk (Rebecca Stott) The mysterious drowning death of Elizabeth Vogelsang, a Cambridge University scholar who was almost finished writing a controversial biography of Isaac Newton.
• Glass Castle (Jeannette walls) A nonfiction story in which Walls chronicles her upbringing at the hands of eccentric, nomadic parents.
• The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Burrows) This books, told in letters, is the story of an English author living in the shadow of World War II—and embarking on a writing project that will dramatically change her life. Unfolding in a series of letters, this enchanting novel introduces readers to the indomitable Juliet Ashton. Through Juliet’s correspondence with her publisher, best friend, and an absorbing cast of characters, readers discover that despite the personal losses she suffered in the Blitz, and author tours sometimes marked by mishaps, nothing can quell her enthusiasm for the written word. One day, she begins a different sort of correspondence, responding to a man who found her name on the flyleaf of a cherished secondhand book. He tells her that his name is Dawsey Adams, a native resident of Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands recently liberated from Nazi occupation. Soon Juliet is drawn into Dawsey’s remarkable circle of friends, courageous men and women who formed the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society as a cover to protect them from the Germans. With their appetite for good books, and their determination to honor the island’s haunting recent history, this is a community that opens Juliet’s heart and mind in ways she could never have imagined.
• The Gravedigger’s Daughter (Joyce Carol Oates)  In 1936 the Schwarts, an immigrant family desperate to escape Nazi Germany, settle in a small town in upstate New York, where the father, a former high school teacher, is demeaned by the only job he can get: gravedigger and cemetery caretaker. After local prejudice and the family’s own emotional frailty result in unspeakable tragedy, the gravedigger’s daughter, Rebecca, begins her astonishing pilgrimage into America, an odyssey of erotic risk and imaginative daring, ingenious self-invention, and, in the end, a bittersweet—but very “American”—triumph. “You are born here, they will not hurt you”—so the gravedigger has predicted for his daughter, which will turn out to be true.   In The Gravedigger’s Daughter, Oates has created a masterpiece of domestic yet mythic realism, at once emotionally engaging and intellectually provocative: an intimately observed testimony to the resilience of the individual to set beside such predecessors as The Falls, Blonde, and We Were the Mulvaneys.
• The House on Fortune Street (Margot Livesey) The book opens multiple perspectives on the life of Dara MacLeod, a young London therapist, partly by paying subtle homage to literary figures and works. The first of four sections follows Keats scholar Sean Wyman: his girlfriend, Abigail, is Dara’s best friend, and the couple lives upstairs from Dara in the titular London house. While Dara tries to coax her boyfriend Edward to move out of the house he shares with his ex-girlfriend and daughter, Sean receives a mysterious letter implying that Abigail is having an affair, and both relationships start to fall apart. The second section, set during Dara’s childhood, is narrated by Dara’s father, who has a strange fascination with Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) and shares Dodgson’s creepy interest in young girls. Dara’s meeting with Edward dominates part three, which mirrors the plot of Jane Eyre, and the final part, reminiscent of Great Expectations, is told mainly from Abigail’s college-era point of view. The pieces cross-reference and fit together seamlessly, with Dara’s fate being revealed by the end of part one and explained in the denouement. Livesey’s use of the classics enriches the narrative, giving Dara a larger-than-life resonance.

• Last night at the Lobster (Stewart O’Nan) Explores how the closing of one chain restaurant profoundly affects many lives.
• The Little Book ( Selden Edwards) First-time novelist Selden Edwards here conjures up a light fable about the birth of modernism — a frothy bit of time-travel that makes literal Nietzsche’s idea of the eternal return. In this case, we’re given to understand that Edwards’s all-American hero, Frank Standish Burden III, and his father, Frank II, were able to change the course of modern history and culture by traveling back to Vienna during its golden age. With cameos by Freud, Mark Twain, Winston Churchill, and a host of Viennese luminaries, Edwards compounds his historical conceit by comparing the radical politics and artistic tumult of the fin de siècle to America in the ’60s. Frank III, known to friends as “Wheeler” for his devastating baseball pitch, shows up Zelig-like at all sorts of crucial moments in his own time as well. A hip refusenik in the Bartleby tradition, he walks off the mound at the Harvard-Yale game — one pitch shy of a perfect game; and off the stage at Altamont — he’s also a kick-ass rocker who learned his licks from Buddy Holly himself. But Wheeler, “a stranger in a strange land” wherever he is, rises to greater challenges when he wakes up one day in the past — a past inhabited also by members of his own Boston Brahmin family, who figure greatly into the future of politics and culture. The plot twists can be dizzying, with some weird suggestions of incest, but Edwards’s mythic quest and liberal notions will delight fans of Jack Finney and John Irving. His New Age-y ideas about a “symmetric reality,” “state of flow,” and “life force” serve him well for this improbable romp through time. –Thomas DePietro
• Martin Dressler (Stephen Milhouse) Martin Dressler is a turn of the last century New York City entrepreneur who begins in his father’s cigar store, but creates a much bigger empire.
• Out Stealing Horses (Per Peterson) Trond Sander, a man nearing 70, dwelling in self-imposed exile at the eastern edge of Norway in a primitive cabin, deals with his complicated past.
• Song Yet Sung (James McBride) Escaped slaves, free blacks, slave-catchers and plantation owners weave a tangled web of intrigue and deceit.
• On Chesil Beach  (Ian McEwan) The year is 1962. Florence, the daughter of a successful businessman and an aloof Oxford academic, is a talented violinist. She dreams of a career on the concert stage and of the perfect life she will create with Edward, the earnest young history student she met by chance and who unexpectedly wooed her and won her heart. Edward grew up in the country on the outskirts of Oxford where his father, the headmaster of the local school, struggled to keep the household together and his mother, brain-damaged from an accident, drifted in a world of her own. Edward’s native intelligence, coupled with a longing to experience the excitement and intellectual fervour of the city, had taken him to University College in London. Falling in love with the accomplished, shy and sensitive Florence – and having his affections returned with equal intensity – has utterly changed his life.Their marriage, they believe, will bring them happiness, the confidence and the freedom to fulfill their true destinies. The glowing promise of the future, however, cannot totally mask their worries about the wedding night. Edward, who has had little experience with women, frets about his sexual prowess. Florence’s anxieties run deeper: she is overcome by conflicting emotions and a fear of the moment she will surrender herself.From the precise and intimate depiction of two young lovers eager to rise above the hurts and confusion of the past, to the story of how their unexpressed misunderstandings and fears shape the rest of their lives,  the novel shows us how the entire course of a life can be changed – by a gesture not made or a word not spoken.
• The Story of Edgar Sawtelle (David Wroblewski) explores the deep and ancient alliance between humans and dogs, and the power of fate through one boy’s epic journey into the wild.Born mute, speaking only in sign, Edgar Sawtelle leads an idyllic life with his parents on their farm in remote northern Wisconsin. For generations, the Sawtelles have raised and trained a fictional breed of dog whose thoughtful companionship is epitomized by Almondine, Edgar’s lifelong companion. But with the unexpected return of Claude, Edgar’s uncle, turmoil consumes the Sawtelle’s once-peaceful home. When Edgar’s father dies suddenly, Claude insinuates himself into the life of the farm – and into Edgar’s mother’s affections.Grief-stricken and bewildered, Edgar tries to prove Claude played a role in his father’s death, but his plan backfires, spectacularly. Edgar flees into the vast wilderness lying beyond the farm. He comes of age in the wild, fighting for his survival and that of the three yearling dogs who follow him. But his need to face his father’s murderer, and his devotion to the Sawtelle dogs, turn Edgar ever homeward.Wroblewski is a master storyteller, and his breathtaking scenes – the elemental north woods, the sweep of seasons, an iconic American barn, a ghost made of falling rain – create a family saga that is at once a brilliantly inventive retelling of Hamlet, an exploration of the limits of language, and a compulsively readable modern classic.
• The Story of Lucy Gault (William Trevor)is set in provincial Ireland in the early 1920s at the height of the civil turmoil and anti-English violence.  Everhard Gault, a retired Anglo-Irish army captain married to an Englishwoman, shoots and wounds one of  the boys who has come in the night to set their house on fire.This act sets in motion a chain of events that has serious consequences for the Gault family.  Convinced that their attackers will return, Everard and Heloise plan to leave Ireland. Their daughter Lucy, heartbroken at the idea, runs away.  When some of her clothes are found by the sea shore, her parents assume she has drowned.  In their grief, they decide to travel, losing touch entirely with Ireland.They are unaware that Lucy didn’t die, but has lived out the years waiting for their return, unable to forgive herself for her recklessness.
•  Three Cups of Tea (Greg Mortenson)   Some failures lead to phenomenal successes, and this American nurse’s unsuccessful attempt to climb K2, the world’s second tallest mountain, is one of them. Dangerously ill when he finished his climb in 1993, Mortenson was sheltered for seven weeks by the small Pakistani village of Korphe; in return, he promised to build the impoverished town’s first school, a project that grew into the Central Asia Institute, which has since constructed more than 50 schools across rural Pakistan and Afghanistan. Coauthor Relin recounts Mortenson’s efforts in fascinating detail, presenting compelling portraits of the village elders, con artists, philanthropists, mujahideen, Taliban officials, ambitious school girls and upright Muslims Mortenson met along the way. As the book moves into the post-9/11 world, Mortenson and Relin argue that the United States must fight Islamic extremism in the region through collaborative efforts to alleviate poverty and improve access to education, especially for girls. Captivating and suspenseful, with engrossing accounts of both hostilities and unlikely friendships, this book will win many readers’ hearts.
• Thunderstruck (Erik Larson)   Larson’s new suspense-spiked history links Guglielmo Marconi, a developer of wireless telegraphy, with Hawley Crippen, a mild-mannered homeopathic doctor in turn-of-the-last-century London. While Larson tells their stories side by side, most listeners will struggle to find a reason for connecting the two men other than that both lived around the same time. Only near the end does the logic behind the intertwining of the stories become apparent and the tale gain speed. At this point, the chief inspector of Scotland Yard sets out after Crippen on a transatlantic chase, spurred by the suspicion that he committed a gruesome murder. Larson’s account of the iconoclastic Marconi’s quest to prove his new technology is less than engaging and Crippen’s life before the manhunt was tame. Without a very compelling cast to entertain during Larson’s slow, careful buildup, many listeners may not make it to the breathless final third of the book when it finally come alive.

I’ve tried to read Ian McEwan before but failed epically. I’d picked up Atonement, put down Atonement, saw (and loved!) the film based on the novel and tried again . . . but nothing. It was dense. It was muddled. It felt like wading through tremendously deep, murky water — with no hope of ever pulling myself out alive.

But then I started hearing about On Chesil Beach, and I was immediately intrigued — partially because of the size, I admit. At 203 pages in its paperback form, I thought, “Hey — I can digest this. I can totally digest this!”

And what I actually did was inhale it.

Newlyweds Florence and Edward have just arrived at a hotel on Chesil Beach in England for their honeymoon. It’s 1962, early days — before the so-called “sexual revolution” that was to come, before young people were given permission (by whom?) to live lives of wild abandon or explore any career opportunity or seek out pleasure in any form they so desired. Florence shifts beef around on her dinner plate with a disgust as “palpable as seasickness,” absolutely dreading the consummation of their relationship she knew would have to happen that night. Edward is also nervous and apprehensive – but he is laden down with performance anxiety and nervous anticipation about whether or not he will be in “top form for his bride.”

The entire story envelopes over the course of just a few hours on that wedding night — and nearly all of it in their hotel room and on the shingled beach below it. It reminded me very much of Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway in that regard — a slow, paced journey through one day that begs to ask the question, “How did we get here?”

And we discover, more or less, precisely how we got here: We learn of Florence’s extreme musical prowess, her devotion to the quartet she formed, her love of music and the violin, her emotional and physical distance from her parents. While she swears she loves Edward dearly, she cannot even fathom making love to him — it’s beyond her realm of understanding. She grew up in an austere home where physical expressions of love were taboo, unheard of; she can barely allow Edward to kiss her open-mouthed, let alone accompany him on the rest of that physical journey. But she desperately wants him to be happy, not to appear “frigid” to him (my sister and her women’s studies course classmates would have a field day with this one! Betty Friedan, anyone?) and to please him in any way she can. But her visceral dread of the act keeps her barely loosening an elbow.

And Edward, on the other hand, grew up with a loving — if painfully eccentric — mother, a father who struggled to maintain order in their messy existence and a desire to do nothing more than get through his teenage years in order to allow his “real” life to begin. He has no contempt for his parents and the squalor of the cottage in which he grew up; he doesn’t hate his life or beg mercifully for it to be over. He merely feels that, as a young man, he’s far too constrained by his own youth — he wants out. He wants to be a man. And marriage seems to be the best, if only, way to do this — to achieve respect and grow up in the eyes of all around him.

I really loved this book . . . and I’m surprised by how much I loved this book. It was all internal, of course, with very little quantifiable action or dialogue . . . so if that’s not your thing, I would seriously consider skipping this one (and probably McEwan in general, but don’t quote me on that). What we gained from staying solely inside the minds and memories of our two main characters was what was so heartbreaking. Edward and Florence really did seem to love one another, if just not in a “conventional” way. I related with a bit of a twinge to Florence’s overwhelming anxieties about entering the adult world — what she would be giving up in order to be someone’s wife, though she believed she was prepared to accept the consequences. I’ll try not to give away too much here, but suffice it to say I wasn’t shocked by the turn of events happening on Chesil Beach . . . but I was disappointed. Not in McEwan’s fine writing, but in the burden of things said and unsaid.

Of the many “quotable” quotes in this story, I might have loved this one the best:

This is how the entire course of a lifetime can be changed — by doing nothing.

The importance of communication can’t be overrated in this one! But Florence just couldn’t reach across the divide. I don’t fault her for it. But do I fault Edward? Maybe a little. Perhaps I, too, will change my opinion in time . . .

And I couldn’t stop thinking of Louise Glück’s “Mock Orange” the entire time I was reading this last night — this poem rose from out of the muddled memories of myEnglish degree, and concentration in poetry. Glad I’m using it for something . . . and I think I’ll end on that note!

MOCK ORANGE
Louise Glück

It is not the moon, I tell you.
It is these flowers
lighting the yard.

I hate them.
I hate them as I hate sex,
the man’s mouth
sealing my mouth, the man’s
paralyzing body—

and the cry that always escapes,
the low, humiliating
premise of union—

In my mind tonight
I hear the question and pursuing answer
fused in one sound
that mounts and mounts and then
is split into the old selves,
the tired antagonisms. Do you see?
We were made fools of.
And the scent of mock orange
drifts through the window.

How can I rest?
How can I be content
when there is still
that odor in the world?

5 out of 5!

ISBN: 0307386171 ♥ Purchase from Amazon ♥ Author Website

Entertainment Weekly has published one of the more interesting book-related lists:  the Worst 5 Books of 2008.

Their opinion?

5. A Wolf at the Table by Augusten Burroughs

4. Bright Shiny Morning by James Frey

3. The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson

2. The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry

1. Chasing Harry Winston by Lauren Weisberger

The only one on the list I’ve read is The Lace Reader, but I didn’t think it was all that bad.  Not fantastic, mind you, but not bad.  And I’ll probably still read A Wolf at the Table because I’ve found Augusten Burroughs’s other memoirs to be enrapturing.

The worst books I read this year?

The Book Goddess will kill me, but I just couldn’t stomach Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach.  It made me confused, and then bored, and then apathetic.  Not my cup of tea.

Crisis by Robin Cook was another rotten egg.  I found the female and minority characters to be painted with very unattractive stereotypes, and even though the plot was interesting, I had to stop reading less than halfway through because I was so disgusted.

Last but not least, Downtown Owl by Chuck Klosterman is a novel that just couldn’t get up and going.  The narrative started, then promptly went nowhere and stayed there.  It needed something like a good alien abduction or mystery killer virus to get things moving.

Luckily, this year I read way more good books than poor ones.  I’m looking forward to getting started on my first book of 2009!

**Britta**

When I first picked On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan, I was super excited. A very close friend of mine had recommended it. He hadn’t read it but still, his word was usually enough for me. So I bought the book. The opening lines were promising…almost lyrical. And I was hooked.

On Chesil Beach is the story of Edward Mayhew and Florence Ponting, two young people deeply in love and of contrasting backgrounds (he’s the son of a schoolmaster and a brain-damaged woman, while she is the musically gifted daughter of a wealthy industrialist and an Oxford philosophy lecturer), who have just been married and are spending their honeymoon in a hotel on the Dorset seashore. 

The book deals with their sexual anxieties and how their contrasting personalities colour their attitudes towards sex.

Although beautifully crafted and impeccably presented, I lost interest in this little book very soon. The language, both dulcet and exquisite tended to be too descriptive for my liking. In my honest opinion, On Chesil Beach is a story that could have been written in five pages.

I handed the book to my friend who had recommended it to me after taking almost a month to finish it. I gave it to him in October and he is yet to finish the book! 

My rating: 3/5 (3 points just for the beautiful language that helped me finish this book)

The Guardian website yesterday published a very interesting article about the favourite books of some of Britain’s top public figures and literature critics.

To celebrate the final month of the year the piece talks to journalists, politicians, broadcasters, military types and many more who, collectively, make a very diverse and colourful cross-section of society. The chosen novels also throw up some intriguing results.

We’ve selected the best celebrity top books for your reading pleasure. To see the entire list click here.

Richard Curtis with fellow bookworm Stephen Fry (BBC)

Richard Curtis – Film director

“Now that Kurt Vonnegut has smoked his last cigarette, John le Carré is my favourite living author. A Most Wanted Man (Hodder & Stoughton) is full of classic le Carré delights – the plots that sneak up on you, the wonderful, compromised Englishmen, the richness of the writing, strangely allied to the feeling that he is just recording documentary fact. When I first started reading le Carré, his middle-aged British men reminded me of my schoolmasters and my father’s friends – now they’ve turned into me.”

Alistair Darling – Chancellor of the Exchequer

“The book I’ve enjoyed most this year is Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach (Vintage). It’s a thoroughly evocative novel from one of the best writers of his generation. Reading it was a great escape from the Treasury.”

General Sir Mike Jackson – Soldier

“The British armed forces are much in the news and it is important that we understand what is being asked of our military. Lieutenant General Sir Hew Pike, one of my oldest comrades-in-arms, knows as much about the human dimension of soldiering as anyone I know, and in From the Front Line (Pen and Sword) he has put together a wonderful description of this human dimension as seen through the letters and diaries of the soldiers of his family over four generations.”

Andrew Marr chews the fat with PM Gordon Brown (BBC)

Andrew Marr – Political journalist

“No question – the non-fiction book of the year is Richard Holmes’s Age of Wonder (HarperCollins), not only beautifully written, but also kicking open a new perspective on the Romantic age, as scientific and artistic thinking began to diverge. But please let me also mention The Legend of Colton H Bryant (Simon & Schuster) by Alexandra Fuller, which is brilliant, moving and almost a new form – factually true fiction. And for fiction, a newcomer, Andrew Nicholl’s The Good Mayor (Black &White), a story of love, dreaming and loss, magical realism from Scotland. You will not be disappointed.”

David Miliband – Foreign Secretary

“Counselor (HarperCollins) by the late Ted Sorensen, Kennedy’s long-term adviser and speechwriter, is a reminder of the best instinct of American liberalism. Self-deprecating (which is touching), and in awe of everything JFK (which is less so), it shows how small-town America (in this case Lincoln, Nebraska) can produce people more like Michael Palin than Sarah Palin. Equality, hard graft and the frontier combine to produce something special. Barack Obama inherits its optimism.”

Michael Palin – Actor

“The surprise of the year was a modest gem of a book by Raja Shehadeh, called Palestinian Walks (Profile). Ostensibly a celebration of a lifetime spent walking the hills around Ramallah, Shehadeh’s book is also an elegy for a lost land, and an inventory of a natural environment that has been slowly whittled away by an ever-expanding Israeli state. Shehadeh’s love of his homeland and his naturalist’s eye make for a poetic little book that has big things to say.”

Jeremy Paxman with one of his larger books, we hope (BBC)

Jeremy Paxman – Television presenter

“I’d not expected to like Sebastian Barry’s The Secret Scripture (Faber), of which I imagine the talkSPORT synopsis might be ‘an old woman inside an Irish loony bin tells her life story’. In fact, I found it mesmerising. It is a simultaneous narrative, in which a doctor attempts to discover why an elderly woman was committed to a Sligo asylum, while she confides her life story to a secret memoir, in which she tells, in intimate and moving detail, how the tides of modern Irish history washed against her life. Climate, countryside and a malignant Catholic priest are all brilliantly rendered. Barry’s prose is brisk and vivid and at times terribly moving.”

John Prescott (blog) – Politician

“What Does China Think? (Fourth Estate) by Mark Leonard is an excellent analysis of the current debate under way in China regarding its future development. An especially important read for all of us concerned about finding global solutions to global problems.”

Kirsty Wark – Television presenter

“Kate Summerscale’s non-fiction whodunnit The Suspicions of Mr Whicher (Bloomsbury) reads like a thriller. She researched a famous murder in 1860, of a three-year-old boy in a country house whose inhabitants were siblings, parents, a governess and servants. But what gave this book such an edge was the author’s meticulous detailing, down to the weather on the day of the murder. Toni Morrison’s latest novel A Mercy (Chatto) goes back to the 1680s and the chaotic beginnings of slavery. In her vivid story centring on one young slave, Florens, Morrison reveals the tragedy of slavery and how it also involved Native Americans and even whites.”

Vivienne Westwood – Fashion designer

“In The Road (Picador) by Cormac McCarthy – actually published last year – a man and his son are ‘on the road’ in a world where nothing lives except for a few human beings. The two must keep going to find food and to avoid groups of cannibals. This is a story of love so total that it shines like a beacon on our human resources for good. Though harrowing, it’s great literature.”

Toni Morrison also gets a special mention from President-elect Barack Obama as he and John McCain talk about their favourite books in a CBS interview below:

Discussion:
Later on today we will be posting a topic whereby you will be able to discuss your favourite reads of 2008 so be sure to come back for that, but right now let’s have some fun. What famous people would you like to think read what books? For example, the editor would like to think George W. Bush’s favourite book was Where The Wild Things Are (an easy one we know). Post your suggestions below and let’s all have a giggle.

Words: Dean Samways

Many of you have complained about the flashbacks in On Chesil Beach, saying that they added little to the story and kept you from finding out what was going to happen to Edward and Florence. Now, in such a short novel with just 5 chapters that are so tightly structured, it is highly unlikely that the flashbacks are meant to be just padding. 

When I first read the book, I also (I confess) grew impatient with the flashbacks, but I’ve since re-read so many times that I’ve come to really like them. Let’s have a look at the second chapter, in which the background of both Edward and Florence unfolds. What are their families like? Who are their friends? What are they concerned with? Can their behaviour be explained with the experiences they made as children and teenagers?

Comment away, please.

The first assignment I gave my students after reading Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach was to fill in a brief survey with a few questions about their reading experience. I was very pleasantly surprised by the very thoughtful and quite varied responses I got, so I am posting some excerpts here. 

There were more girls in class on Friday than boys, but I still felt that there was quite a difference in reception of the book between them, so I’ve split the responses into two posts. Ladies first!

Did you like the book? Were you moved by it?

… it was a pleasure to read as you learn a huge variety of words about disgust…

… I was hoping until the last word that it would turn out well. Sometimes I laughed, I almost cried, and I really pitied both of the characters…

I don’t like this kind of writing, it always makes me feel really tired. 

I felt really sad about this young married couple and a bit embarrassed while reading it. 

… I was in a constant state of tension and ‘fear’ when I was reading the book, which made it a torture on one hand, a pleasure on the other hand…

… the fact that you are able to get to know the different thoughts of each person made the book more interesting and readable for me. 

In my opinion, Ian McEwan is a very skilled writer; he manages to provoke the reader’s emotions and his descriptions appealed to my senses. Many of the scenes were easy to visualize for me – I felt like a secret observer and sometimes like an intruder to their privacy.  

I really liked the book for several reasons. For once, it is short – don’t laugh, I just think that it is great to read it in one sitting and live through the protagonists’ evening while you are all comfy and, especially, safe from all these embarrassments. 

The question of whether I was moved by the book is a lot easier to answer (with a plain and honest yes) than whether I liked the book or not. I am not even sure myself. I loved the story, I didn’t really like the flashbacks that much and I absolutely hated the end. Well … in the beginning. I think that was only because it was just so abysmally sad. Now, I’ve come to think that the book wouldn’t be anywhere near as great without the ending. So after having let it sit for while: Yes, I loved the book because I think you learn a lot from it. 

Although only one night is described in detail it does not get boring and at the end, when the reader is told about the future lives of the protagonists it was so moving it nearly made me cry, especially the scene when Florence looks at seat 9b during her performance. 

 

What did you think about the main characters?

Edward I found quite well described and understandable and I could identify with him quite well. Florence however I have some problems with. I am not sure whether only I have problems understanding where she’s coming from or if maybe the author (being a man) hasn’t described her so well. I do think there were and are women who have trouble with sex, but I highly doubt that they have or had the same problems as Florence does. 

… for me it was horrible that her husband couldn’t accept her the way she was. 

Of course, you feel sorry for them as they both have no sexual experience and are afraid to talk about it. I think they are both people who are easy to love as characters in a book because they have a lot of problems which makes them rather human. … I could imagine the two sides of (Florence’s) personality – the shy and the energetical one – very well. Edward is very sweet and tries to hold his own desires back because he loves Florence so much. I could understand his shame and anger about her disgust. 

Florence always wants to please her family, friends, etc, regardless of whether she likes it or not. 

I found it really easy to identify with both Edward and Florence, because they both had fears and thoughts everyone has once had. Florence’s suppressed fears were a bit exaggerated, but Edward I really liked and I could completely understand him.

Ian McEwan has the great talent to make the reader feel the same as the characters in his book, the embarrassment in their wedding night, their happiness when they fall in love and their despair after everything went wrong and they got divorced. 

Are there any open questions you have about the book?

Did Edward and Florence really love each other? Where do Florence’s problems and especially her disgust originate? Does Florence feel sexually attracted to ANYONE? Has she just not discovered her sexuality yet or is she searching in the wrong places.

… I sometimes just wanted to crawl underneath my blanket and stop reading …

What would have made it more bearable for her?

I think their problem really was a problem of communication. They never talked about Florence’s problems with being kissed or touched. 

I would like to talk about the image of men and women given in this book – and to what extent these situations still happen – maybe not to newlyweds but to teenagers who feel pressure to have sex.

I am very fascinated by the language the author employs and his style of describing and presenting, hence I would love to talk about his language use and technique. 

I would really like to talk more about the background of the book. For example, the time, and why it was that sex was such a secret. Why didn’t they talk about it?

On page 100 it seemed to me that Florence was raped by her dad …

… I would like to talk about what would have happened if they had got married ten years later because Edward often thinks about it when they are already divorced. 

 

The best way to start your day in Tel Aviv: Beach Walk

MC Carolina and Funset are in charge of the audio setup and Tel Aviv Beaches do the rest. Check out this friendly video of all those healthy types taking their power walk on the beach early in the morning. If your staying in the city, the beach cant be more than 5-15 min walk from you and this is the way to start your day, breakfast will be all the more delicious afterwords….
Isragirl Presents : Take a walk on the wild side, Video by kuvaev ©

Early morning walk on the beach is also recommended for those staying in Herzliya, Netanya, Ashdod, Caesarea or Haifa (even though most hotels in the latter are situated on Mount Carmel, so you’ll need a ride to the beach). And if power walking is not really your thing, you can always meditate, read or just listen to music. The beach vibe will work it’s wonders on you as long as you welcome the new day with an open heart… and remember: you are on a vacation….

Enjoy Life, Enjoy the Beach… Tel Aviv Awaits You!!!

• Travel Israel: Guide, Travel Tips, Photos and Videos
• MC Carolina and The Nechama Girls
• Tel Aviv – The Must Visit City Video
• When Yellow Changes into Green
• Gyms and Health Clubs while visitng Israel…
• Romantic Getaway vs. Family Vacation
• Tel Aviv Port Video Special
• Osho Israel: Passion for Meditation Workshop
• Yoga and Pilates while in Israel
• Isragirl Presents: Stuff…

Chesil Beach from the Subtropical Gardens of Abbotsbury, by Steve Naylor

Chesil Beach is a rare shingle beach on the South coast of England, near Weymouth. The pebbles on the beach really are graded in size from south to north, but you are not allowed to take any home as a souvenir or as inspiration.

I’ve compiled a map for you that’s meant to give you an idea where it all takes place. Don’t forget to check out the great aerial view of the Cerne Abbas Giant (you have to switch to the satellite view to see it)!

More pictures of Chesil Beach can be seen here (some are very garishly photoshopped). I particularly liked this picture of flotsam and jetsam, because I love the words flotsam and jetsam. 

For a look at the lush subtropical gardens at Abbotsbury go here. I drove past them and really regret it now. 

And finally, a video that someone was cool enough to make of the waves on Chesil Beach. Listen! you hear the grating roar of pebbles which the waves draw back and fling at the return up the high strand …

Steve Naylor’s photograph is licensed under Creative Commons. Some rights reserved.

A note to all the other readers of my blog: my course has quite bravely decided to read Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach. Now, don’t get me wrong, this is a very fine novel and the writing is breathtakingly good, but it really is rather embarrassing. 

Charting the depths of English embarrassment (and ineptitude!) when it comes to sexuality will therefore be a recurring topic. What better way to start than with the infamous “Nudge Nudge” Monty Python sketch, in which a stiff-upper-lipped pub customer is assaulted by another man’s almost manic innuendos and double-entendres. See him nudge! See him wink!* And make sure to watch it to the very end, even if it is horribly painful. 

The nudge-nudge guy is a perfect illustration of the word prurient. 

* it appears that the idiom “nudge nudge, wink wink” was born in this sketch in the first place.