After a busy week at work picking up the threads that were left before I went away on my holiday I have finally made time to pass on my comments about Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach.
For those of you that don’t know, this isn’t an official book of the Rainbow Readers Book Groups. This was my own choice to slip in my case should I find time to pick up a book. At only 166 pages this small but perfectly formed offering, published by Vintage, was an excellent choice. I didn’t have the time to spend reading I am pleased to say and so had to finfish it off on the flight back home.
I don’t really want to go into too much detail as I do hope that Lancaster’s Rainbow Readers, and I am sure many other book groups, will select this as a choice at a future date.
In short it is a love story which from the outside seems to have all the makings of seeing the central characters, Florence and Edward, live “happily ever after”. As the reader is transported backwards and forwards from the present to the past we slowly start to understand the make up of these fragile and flawed people.
What struck me was the fact that throughout the majority of the book it was the author’s narrative which relays the story, there is next to no speech from anyone, and when it is used it carries with it a weight and ferocity which makes the story all the more life like.
I would recommend this to anyone who is looking for something viewed from a different perspective and who wants to become immersed in a well crafted study of life and attitudes in the 50’s and 60’s. If you have read it, and it doesn’t matter whether you are a member of the Lancaster Rainbow Readers or not, then feel free to share your comments on the book on our blog.
