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On Chesil Beach
- Narrated by: Ian McEwan
- Length: 4 hrs and 30 mins
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On Chesil Beach
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Summary
Winner of the British Book Awards, Author of the Year and Book of the Year, 2008.
Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, 2007.
Shortlisted for the Audiobook Download of the Year, 2007.
It is June 1962. In a hotel on the Dorset coast, overlooking Chesil Beach, Edward and Florence, just married that morning, are sitting down to dinner in their room. Neither is entirely able to suppress anxieties about the wedding night to come.
On Chesil Beach is another masterwork from Ian McEwan - a story about how the entire course of a life can be changed by a gesture not made or a word not spoken.
This download is unabridged and is read by the author. This is the first time Ian has read his own audio and it is a brilliant, authoritative, read. The download also features an in depth interview with Ian McEwan about On Chesil Beach. He is interviewed by John Mullan, Professor of English at UCL.
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Critic reviews
"Focusing with hyper-acute attentiveness on just two hours or so (Saturday, with its one-day time-span looks shabby in comparison), the book tightens even further McEwan's consummate powers of close up... Clean of sprawl and clutter - not a word, incident or image seems slackly placed - the book never hardens into the schematic... Edward and Florence are intensely likeable, believable people into whose personalities and predicaments a wealth of imaginative sympathy has welled." (The Sunday Times)
"McEwan's masterful 13th work of fiction most resembles a five-part classical drama rendered in prose....[His] flawless omniscient narration has a curious (and not unpleasantly condescending) fable-like quality, as if an older self were simultaneously disavowing and affirming a younger." (Publishers Weekly)
"Ian McEwan chose to release his own unabridged audiobook reading of his new novel On Chesil Beach to coincide with the publication and to match the price of the book itself, even giving the audiobook the added value of an illuminating half-hour interview with John Mullan, the English literature professor. Does this herald a new trend in publishing, or does it reflect the peculiar suitability of this particular novel to the audio medium? A bit of both is the answer. New books are frequently published at the same time as audiobook versions, but not all novelists write books that suit the medium. In the interview after the novel, McEwan explains that he likes reading them aloud in draft to live audiences, using their reactions to hone his final version. He also likes the 'enclosed, uninterrupted experience' of reading a novella from beginning to end... Listening non-stop to McEwan reading intensifies the book's impact." (The Times)
What listeners say about On Chesil Beach
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- A. Murray
- 04-09-23
Absolutely great
If you’re after something deeper than what you read, then this is the book. It also makes and invites you to think beyond the surface. However, if you’re not ready for that, then don’t even bother.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
- Lorraine
- 14-11-08
Won't appeal to everyone
While I personally thoroughly enjoyed this intimate vignette, I know that many readers of modern fiction will find it slow and boring. However, connoisseurs of fine literature will surely enjoy its attention to detail, the intricacies of the characters motives, the tragedy of a doomed love. Beautifully crafted. A fine portrait of a time.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- RKG
- 07-01-24
Projection of a man’s fantasies
Understandable that it is a story set before the wild 60’s but it still
seems to project the fantasies of the male world, especially the older male… who has all regrets that youth has passed him. And why should abuse be the only reason that a woman is frigid? I just didn’t find it convincing enough,,,& the man gets chided for believing in love and service, well as the woman gets applauded for getting successful by throwing aside natural human emotion and acting in a robotic fashion to succeed… strange …
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
- Andrew
- 28-01-11
Not to be missed
Surely this is one of the most spellbinding yet excruciating pieces of prose that you could possibly listen to. The onner working of the characters minds is laid bare for the reader to empathise with and despair. McEwan reads it himself very effectively. The story is a sad one that leaves you thinking and the interview with McEwan that follows is enlightening in terms of hearing him explain the thought process behind some aspects of the tale. This really is not to be missed.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
- Mrs. REP
- 06-03-08
Excellent!
This was a really good listen - very sad though.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Joanne
- 05-08-16
Heart breaking
Beautifully written and sensitively read. How pure and simple an occasion can be told to such effect is genius.
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- carla
- 01-08-18
Together and yet Alone
A moving story, of a loving couple's shame and inability to speak their truths. And whether in those times of long ago, or our times now, the dynamics of love and individuals in love is still a struggle.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Tessa
- 28-09-17
Compact story, wonderfully well crafted.
A wordsmith at his peak, the reader is given an occasionally uncomfortable and disquieting look at a dysfunctional sexual relationship that is propped by the reticence and ignorance that was the sorry backdrop to the so-called 'swinging sixties '
The author gives us credible characters, and sensitively describes their thoughts and feelings , to which of course their words do no justice.
He displays his deep understanding of the psychology that drives our lives, both enabling and disabling the paths we take and ultimately our self actualisation.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Richard Bonnor-moris
- 28-09-19
Brilliant and thought provoking
The “non-decision’ has never been better depicted. Wonderful and beautiful character creation. A simple situation brought perfectly to life and the non-decision delivered immaculately. This book puts the reader right there and unravels the consequences brutally. I loved it enough to feel guilty i’d given other, lesser, works 5 stars, it deserves more.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
- LTFS
- 22-05-07
A natural successor to Greene and Golding
As if there was ever any serious doubt, Ian McEwan's 'On Chesil Beach' clearly establishes his reputation once and for all as the greatest English novelilst since the deaths of Graham Greene and William Golding. He is sharper than Julian Barnes, more aware of life's strangeness than Sarah Waters and he tackles deeper themes than Joanne Harris. All these are great writers, but McEwan is head and shoulders above them.
'On Chesil Beach' is an extraordinarily risky undertaking for a novellist at what some mistakenly believe is at his best (they're wrong, of course: there's better to come). Given the critics' passion for rubbishing a popular intellectual, had this flopped, there would have been the usual British celebration of failure after triumph. McEwan must have been aware of that risk, but, as a true artist, he wrote what he needed to write, regardless, I suppose, of the reaction of readers. And that's exactly as it should be. Golding did it with 'Darkness Visible', Greene did it with everything after 'The Heart of the Matter'.
What is a surprise - and a wholly pleasant one, I hasten to add - is how good McEwan is at reading his novel. And the interview after the reading is fascinating, too.
All in all, a treat of the first order.
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6 people found this helpful