After I finished the first draft of my novel I was uncertain how to go about revising it. I knew there was a great deal of work to be done, but I lacked the skills to do that work. As part of my newly-separated-dreading-divorce-but-I’m-gonna-make-the-best-of-it mindset, I enrolled in a one-week workshop at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival. I packed enough books to last me for weeks. I figured, though, that during the morning, when I was done with my writing, I’d have plenty of time to read before I headed to workshop. I didn’t realize how much reading the workshop would entail. I did manage to finish one book, which, by the way, I purchased in Iowa City. I don’t remember who recommended Ian McEwan’s Atonement, but I’m glad it was recommended to me. I learned a lot about point of view from the novel.
Two years ago, in one of my MFA workshops, the professor had us read McEwan’s Saturday. I usually can’t spend the extra money required for hard covers, but I liked the other book enough that I figured this would be a keeper. Besides, it was required, and it wasn’t in soft cover yet. I slogged through the novel, only sticking with it because I needed to prepare for our class discussions. As soon as I was finished, though, I couldn’t stop thinking about it–the sign of a brilliant novel for me. I’ll re-read it again someday, and I wonder if I’ll like it better during the reading the next time. I often return to the novel in my mind and think about what McEwan achieved and how he achieved it.
I trolled my library’s shelves a few weeks ago, and when I saw McEwan’s latest novel, On Chesil Beach, I picked it up. It’s a compact little book, probably more of a novella than novel. I read it at bedtime a few evenings, and I finished it up between student conferences. Here’s what I wrote:
Just this minute I finished Ian McEwan’s short novel On Chesil Beach. It wounds my soul. The mistakes of the characters are sad, but easy to understand. McEwan adds to that sadness, rendering it poignant and heart breaking by projecting forward 40 years to show us the man who would have been able to make a success of his marriage if only he’d had the experience of his later life in the great moment of conflict.
How often are we silent when we ought to speak? How often do we close ourselves off when happiness requires that we open ourselves? McEwan crafts his novel with his typical restraint, which belies the passion and wild emotions of the characters.
I asked Neal to read the book when I finished. He’s finding it to be less fascinating than I do, but I’m urging him to get to the end. I see myself in these characters; I see my struggles to communicate in the most intimate of relationships in their own. I’m grateful to McEwan for his ability to capture the feeling of being unable to say that which most needs to be said and for reminding me to continue to strive for better communication in my relationships.
Let me know if you’ve read any of these novels; I’d love to hear what you think of them. What else has been rocking your reading time lately?
I’ve tried to read Atonement twice and have failed twice to get beyond the opening section. It was disturbing and tedious. I liked none of the characters and I frankly thought it pretentious.
Conversely, unlike most readers, I loved Saturday — it was brilliant, metaphorical and wise in it’s examination of middle age, success and discovering one’s true ethics.
On Chesil Beach was less momentous book — a novella as you say and it’s import was limited by scope and length — but I found in it a wonderful elegy to the limits of communication given personal experience and societal constraints.
Just my 2.5 cents worth.
In the interest of familiarizing myself with the adolescent literature I hope to be teaching one day, I have been reading books for young adults. I read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon not too long ago. It is a “mystery” of sorts told in first person, with an autistic narrator. It stayed in my mind, which I also consider to be the mark of a good book. Most recently, I read Parrot in the Oven: Mi Vida, a Mexican American coming of age story. Parrot was great, but did not affect me in the same way.