On Chesil Beach

A really talented writer can pack an entire world into a very few pages.  This is exactly what the gifted Ian McEwan has done in his short novel On Chesil Beach, published in 2007.

When we first meet Edward and Florence they are a young couple who have just been married hours before and are off on their honeymoon at Chesil Beach.  Their fumbling sexual dysfunction and psychological baggage cause them to have a disastrous wedding night which has a catastrophic effect on the rest of their lives.

After reading this, the reader is totally immersed in the world of a young intellectual English couple in the early 1960s.  In a few short pages(the novel is only 166 pages), we learn all about Edward and Florence's childhood and their courtship and hangups.  Edward's father is a school headmaster who has to take care of his brain damaged wife and his three children.  Florence's mother is an emotionally cold Oxford philosophy professor who would rather read Plato than be with her children.  There are subtle clues that Florence may have been sexually abused by her father.  (I didn't pick up on this until I started reading reviews of the book online.  After being pointed out to me, I now see the clues in the novel.  Was Florence molested by her father?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  The reader will have to decide).

Anyway, I can't say too much about this intriguing little story or it will give away too much.  But On Chesil Beach is definitely a great read.

The Children Act

Ian McEwan's new novel, The Children Act, is about three of my favorite subjects: law, sex and religion.

Fiona May is a fifty nine year old British High Court Judge in the Family Law Division.  As the novel opens, she is working on an opinion in a child custody case between an Orthodox Jewish Father and a now Reformed Jewish mother.  Her previous case, about conjoined twins whom the conservative Catholic parents do not want to separate and kill one to save the other, has haunted her.

Because of her preoccupation with cases, Fiona has not had sex with Jack, her husband of over thirty years.  Jack, a college professor going through his "early old age crisis," has picked out a twenty nine year old statistician whom he wants to have an affair with.  Jack tells Fiona that he needs to have a passionate love affair before he's too old for it, and that he wants her permission.  In response, Fiona throws Jack out and changes the locks on the apartment.

Author Ian McEwan

Fiona's new case is an emergency hearing about a teenage Jehovah's Witness, Adam Henry, who is suffering from leukemia and will need a blood transfusion to survive.  The parents refuse permission on religious grounds and the hospital seeks a court order to overrule them.  Adam, who is 17, is only months away from his eighteenth birthday which would give him the authority to decide for himself.

Fiona goes to the hospital and interviews Adam and is smitten with him.  Adam is an intellectual, a gifted poet and a talented musician.  Fiona ultimately rules that the Court has a duty to save Adam from his religion.  Ultimately, this casts Adam adrift and causes him to loose his staunch faith.  He replaces his faith in God with a romantic obsession with the Judge which results in tragic consequences.

I enjoyed The Children Act a great deal.  It was not nearly as good as Sweet Tooth, but it was a very good read from one of the best contemporary British novelists.  Four out of five gavels.

Ian McEwan's SWEET TOOTH

Serena Frome (rhymes with plume) is a spy.  Well, actually she’s a glorified secretary who works for the British intelligence agency MI5 during the height of the Cold War in the early 1970s.  Serena, the daughter of an Anglican Bishop who didn’t force his religion on the family, is assigned to operation Sweet Tooth, a top secret project to recruit and pay writers who will produce novels with an anti-Communist bent.

Serena, who is posing as the employee of an arts foundation, is detailed to recruit Tom Haley, a college professor and aspiring young novelist.  When a stunningly beautiful girl walks into his office and offers him a fellowship, Haley is smitten.  Soon, Serena and Haley are lovers.  Sleeping with the target exceeds Serena’s orders from headquarters.  She loves Tom and wants to tell him the truth but how can she blow her cover?

This is the first work which I have ever read by the prolific and popular Ian McEwan.  Sweet Tooth is an intelligent novel which has as much to do with the seduction of the reader by literature as it does with spies and Cold War intrigue.  Sweet Tooth is a beautiful novel with a great ending.  Highly recommended.

Ian McEwan