Title: On Chesil Beach
Author: Ian McEwan
Publisher: Vintage Books
Bought at: Tom Mboya Street for 50b0b
Rating: 10/10
I have never read a book that wrote an unfortunate burst of semen so well. There is a scene McEwan has written where the main characters Florence and Edward, newly weds, are in their honeymoon suite trying to get things going. Florence feels she should suffer the sex because she loves Edward (she was also fighting a growing revulsion to what was about to transpire) and Edward just wants to do it. Like reallllly wants to do it. So silly Florence decides to touch his penis and feel-feel the tip of it. The guy loses control of his brain and shoots seed all over her. She was a virgin so she did not know that that burst of cream is supposed to be a turn on or a trophy for her ability to make Edward shoot that far. Hehehehehe. Not Florence. She was so grossed out she jumped up in revulsion and used the pillow to wipe off the mess but you know…it’s like wiping toothpaste off a sink without water. The stuff just spread and smelled all over the rest of where it hadn’t landed. Florence ran out of the room leaving a very injured Edward. She went to the beach, he followed her, they quarreled, he called her a bitch for tricking him into a sexless marriage, she proposed that he have sex with other women because the only thing she could give him was love. He was scandalised and she left for good. That was the end of that marriage. Sex is the devil, man. They got divorced for lack of consummation.
On Chesil Beach is a really sweet story and all through you really root for the two characters and hope that they will resolve their sexual awkwardness and live happily ever after. The narration of their past lives actually makes you believe that there is hope that – eventhough they come from different backgrounds and one likes rock music while the other loves classical music – grand opposites can attract and explode.
But instead you learn that love is one thing and sexual chemistry is another. Someone can love you deeply and not want to see you even remotely naked. This is unacceptable when you are young but when you grow older, as Edward did, you will think of lost love and … “Love and patience. If only he had had them both at once- would surely have seen them both through. And then what unborn children might have had their chances, what young girl with an Alice band might have become his loved familiar? This is how the entire course of life can be changed – by doing nothing. On Chesil Beach he could have called out to Florence, he could have gone after her.”
Makes you want to cry, right?
Akhatenje 