• On Chesil Beach

  • By: Ian McEwan
  • Narrated by: Ian McEwan
  • Length: 4 hrs and 30 mins
  • 4.6 out of 5 stars (23 ratings)

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On Chesil Beach  By  cover art

On Chesil Beach

By: Ian McEwan
Narrated by: Ian McEwan
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Publisher's 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.

©2007 Ian McEwan (P)2007 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"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)

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    3 out of 5 stars

difficult to believe

well written and narated by Ian McEwan. Difficult to accept outcome of couple. I feel all couples have issues and difficulties that they have to over come. Love usually gets them through. I found it hard to accept this couple's decision.

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