Thirteen years later, in 1975, a young girl enters the record shop that Edward now runs. The couple part ways, and their marriage is annulled. Not able to say what is wrong she tells him that although she loves him very much and wants to be with him for life, she can only be a platonic wife. She flees along the beach, where she is confronted by an angry Edward. They are both inexperienced sexually, and their first attempt at sex goes badly wrong when Florence’s trauma of being molested by her father is triggered. On Edward and Florence's honeymoon at Chesil Beach, their backgrounds and temperaments come to the fore: Edward's quickness to anger and occasional physical belligerence, and Florence's unspoken relationship with her father, who obviously dominates her.

They fall in love quickly, meet each other's families, and eventually decide to get married, despite their differences in background and social status.įlorence is secretly anxious about the wedding due to her fears about sex, but there is no one with whom she can discuss it.

He is an historian at University College, London and rock-and-roll lover she a classical violinist at Oxford with her own quartet.

In 1962, Edward Mayhew and Florence Ponting first meet after graduating from their respective universities. The film had its world premiere in the Special Presentations section at the Toronto International Film Festival on 7 September 2017, and was released in the United States and United Kingdom in May 2018. The initial experience and their differing responses to the failure have lifelong consequences for both. It stars Saoirse Ronan and Billy Howle and tells the story of virgins, Florence and Edward, and their first disastrous attempt at having sex on their wedding night. On Chesil Beach is a 2017 British drama film directed by Dominic Cooke (in his feature directorial debut) and written by Ian McEwan, who adapted his own 2007 Booker Prize-nominated novella of the same name. Brief and elegiac, On Chesil Beach spotlights the talents of a literary grand master at the top of his game. One of McEwan's greatest skills is his ability to limn the precise, irrevocable moment in which life changes forever.Īnd although that moment is telegraphed within the first few pages of this rueful tale, it loses none of its tragic, devastating force when it occurs. Locked in their inhibitions and utterly unable to discuss their fears and needs, they are victims not only of personal experience but of a distinctively British brand of repression destined to crumble in the sexual revolution. He longs to consummate the marriage she is repelled by the very idea. Very much in love, Edward and Florence are predictably nervous, but for different reasons. Ian McEwan's emotionally charged novel follows an inexperienced young couple through their disastrous wedding night at a Dorset hotel in 1962.

Book on chesil beach