Ian McEwan writes a different kind of love story in On Chesil Beach than he gave us in Atonement. Taking his time to bring us firmly into the wedding night anticipated by both Florence and Edward (Florence with fearful disgust of what is in store, and Edward in ecstatic longing), McEwan also carries us back into their courtship and into their own histories, so that by the time the wedding bed is reached, we are hoping  so much for the young couple that it will not be the disaster it portends to be.

It is McEwan’s ease with us, his taking the time to unfold slowly and easily, yet never dully or unnecessarily, the peculiar and unique circumstances of the two young people, that makes us complicit partners in the outcome.  Florence and Edward are as well known to us as they are to themselves, and certainly better known to us than to each other.  What is left unsaid between them — what they do not know about each other –  is in the end the reason for great pain.  Because we know so much, we feel anguish; we feel real discomfort that we cannot reach across the pages and shake them each, just a little.

Florence and Edward are not stock characters, one a musician of a privileged family, the other a historian from a thwarted family.  They are much more than their circumstances: they are unique responses to the facts of their background, and education, their choice in love and marriage, and their placement in time, just before a freeing up of sexual expression and frank talk.  But this is not a book about sex and one’s appetite ( or not) for it.  It is a book about why these two people, in love and married, cannot talk about, or do, the things that will bring them together.  There is always a chasm of (mis)understanding between two people, always things we do not know or fully understand about the people we love so much.  It is the act of going across that chasm, with a gesture or a word, that creates a connection.  The understanding and the knowledge will never be complete, but our efforts at  connection can make up for our failures.

McEwan is deeply romantic and I would argue that his deep romanticism is his only flaw, in that it leads him to write situations that do not resonate as truth.  After the whole book leads us willingly along because of its deep truthfulness — we know and believe these characters completely — we find ourselves suddenly jarred and shocked by the one act of omission that throws entire lives out of whack.  It just seems a bit much.   McEwan states: “This is how the entire course of a life can be changed — by doing nothing.“  Yes, that’s true; but in reality, between people in love (and not just romantic love), there is never just the one failure:  most of us will try again and again to connect with one we love.  We will let our loved one back in, perhaps too many times, to try again for a state of grace and understanding.  And as a realist, even a romantic realist, I argue that we have many chances to make good on our failures; not as many as we would wish for and maybe not as many as we need, but certainly we have more than just one try to get it right.  But maybe I am the deep romantic here, and McEwan the harsh realist.