On Chesil Beach

On Chesil Beach is a short novel by the English writer Ian McEwan, published in 2007 and set on the Dorset coast in 1962.

The whole of the present action takes place over a single evening, and McEwan uses the narrow frame to move outward into the two histories that produced the couple: Edward's childhood in a vicarage with a mother who was brain-damaged, and Florence's upbringing by parents whose opinions on marriage left no room for the subject that is now in front of her. The book is about a particular moment in English social history, just before the decade changed, when two decent and inexperienced people have no shared language for what they are supposed to do, and about the way a single night can settle the shape of a life. McEwan keeps the prose close and slow, and the reader can see both of their mistakes being made at once, which is where the novel's pain comes from. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2007.