On Chesil Beach [Paperback]

Soon to be a major motion picture starring Saoirse Ronan

The bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author ofAtonementbrilliantly illuminates the collision of sexual longing, deep-seated fears, and romantic fantasy on a young couple’s wedding night.

It is 1962, and Florence and Edward are celebrating their wedding in a hotel on the Dorset coast. Yet as they dine, the expectation of their marital duties become overwhelming. Unbeknownst to them both, the decisions they make this night will resonate throughout their lives. With exquisite prose, Ian McEwan creates inOn Chesil Beacha story of lives transformed by a gesture not made or a word not spoken.

“Heartbreaking. . . . Breathtaking. . . . Masterly. . . . No one now writing in English surpasses or even matches McEwan's accomplishment. —The Washington Post Book World

“Remarkable, engaging, and gripping. . . .On Chesil Beachis not only a wonderful read but also perhaps that rarest of things: a perfect novel. —San Francisco Chronicle

“Dazzling. . . . McEwan treats [his subject] with a boundless sympathy, one that enlists the reader even as it disguises the fact that this seeming novel of manners is as fundamentally a horror novel as any [he's] written. —Jonathan Lethem,The New York Times Book Review

“A small, perfect, haunting work of art. . . . McEwan draws a humane, touching, sometimes comic portrait of marital misunderstanding in an era when so much less was sayable, or said. —Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Vintage McEwan. . . . His finely honed prose is a deep pleasure to experience. —Chicago Sun-Times

“Marvelously realized. . . .Wrenching, funny, smart, and hugely gratifying in unexpected ways. . . .On Chesil Beachis as merciful to its characters as it is merciless in its heartbreak.  —The Boston Globelì