Ian McEwan's novella On Chesil Beach is the intimate story of Florence and Edward, two young lovers whose relationship comes to hang in the balance, though mere hours have passed since their wedding. Through a series of flashbacks, the reader comes to see how these two naive souls have arrived at such an impasse, in part due to their residence within the setting of early 1960s Britain, but also owing to traumas in their respective pasts. The novella focuses on themes such as sexual abuse, repression, shame, secrecy, and fate.
Ian McEwan is very much a product of the new British universities, those popularly known as "plate-glass universities" to distinguish them from the older "red-brick universities" at which writers such...
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Ian McEwan first came to public notice in 1975; he was immediately recognized as an important and new voice on the fictional scene. Along with Martin Amis and Julian Barnes, his contemporaries, he is ...
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Ian (Russell) McEwan