On the Beach (Ian McEwan)
Am Strand (Original: On Chesil Beach ) is a novella-like novel by the English bestselling author Ian McEwan , which was first published in English in 2007 and in German in the same year in a translation by Bernhard Robben .
content
In July 1962, Edward Mayhew and Florence Ponting were in a hotel on a beach ( Chesil Beach ) in Dorset . They want to spend their wedding night and honeymoon there. The two, only a few years over 20, come from very different families. Edward's mother is brain damaged as a result of an accident with a serious head injury. He has two younger siblings, twins. His father is a teacher and, in addition to his work, devotedly takes care of the whole family, especially the mother, who lives with them despite her disability.
The Ponting family, on the other hand, is conservative and wealthy, the father entrepreneurs, the mother a lecturer in Oxford. Florence has a younger sister. Most of the housework is done by the daily maid.
Edward studied history, Florence attended music college and over time will develop into a respected violinist. They get to know each other on the occasion of a political meeting, which indicates the impending social changes at the end of the 1960s.
Edward and Florence are madly in love with each other, but both wait with very different feelings for what will finally happen on their wedding night. Edward has so far tried in vain to get closer to Florence sexually in the short time before their marriage. On the wedding night he is sexually aroused, while Florence is frightened and almost repulsed by what she sees coming. But she doesn't want to hurt Edward under any circumstances. Neither of them can find any words for their state of mind, and Florence is even convinced that there are no words at all for their dilemma .
In intensive psychological reviews and insights into the inner life of the two protagonists , it is shown what the two think about themselves and about their sexual expectations towards the other and how they interpret the events as a result of these expectations, subjectively logically, but objectively completely wrong . It gradually becomes more and more clear to the reader that Florence's reserve is not only due to her lack of education, but above all to the fact that she may have been abused by her father in her childhood - a fact that is not explicitly shown in the flashbacks, but is implied.
After an unsuccessful petting on their wedding night, Florence escapes from the hotel bed and runs to the beach. Edward hesitantly follows her. In their nightly debate on the beach, the misunderstandings that the reader already knows from the thoughts of the people are now openly verbalized and continued. The scene ends in mutual reproaches and with a suggestion that Florence in her hopelessness was lovingly meant but completely misunderstood by Edward. Florence runs back and quickly leaves the hotel. Edward doesn't try to stop her anymore. The marriage ends in divorce and the two never see each other again.
The novel ends with a brief summary of Edward's later life, his later thoughts on what happened on the beach, his admission that he never again loved a woman like Florence, and his regret for doing too little and not for her to have fought.
criticism
In the book review in the Tagesspiegel it is said: “'Am Strand' expands the short story of an 'unheard-of incident', as Goethe once and for all characterized the genre, into a small novel with five chapters. In two strands, McEwan tells of the family origins of the couple - and in a kind of epilogue on the last pages, how Edward remembers the night that destroyed their lives together. […] Ian McEwan, born in 1948, is the virtuoso of such microscopic precision that the narrative time overgrows the narrated time. […] But it can hardly be overestimated how Ian McEwan gives words to the helplessness and speechlessness of his couple - far beyond that he describes them as 'prisoners of their time'. If Florence regrets that a language still has to be invented for what has happened to her, he has shaped it with this little book. "
In 2007, Die Welt wrote in their review of the novel: “McEwan's mastery is not in [...] the content, but in the form. His study of a British wedding night reads like a textbook example of a literature of foreplay. [...] The dawn of a new way of dealing with sex in the mid-1960s ensured that this discipline was pushed into the background as a literary undertaking. McEwan's achievement in 'On the Beach' is her recapture. The 1962 time capsule, laden with so many imponderables for the lovers, is perfect for the narrator's plan. "
Die Zeit , however, judges in its book review: “Ian McEwan is not a writer in the true sense of the word. He's more of a sociologist who writes novels; a lecturer who wants to prove something; an extremely skilled text engineer, and when he loses his skill, the pipes and struts of his story rattle very sadly in the wind. [...] In his new novel Am Strand these otherwise so precisely calculated plans cross over, literature and time diagnosis get mixed up - which is perhaps the reason for the strangely lifeless and, even worse, listless failure of this sex novel before the Age of sex. [...] In all of this, McEwan is as interested in the body as he is in the psychology of the two failures in love, which get caught up in the same way as the zipper. On the beach there is a chain of accusations and misunderstandings - one word, finally, a gesture, one step would have been enough to save the life together. Perhaps McEwan could have turned this strangely didactic story into a sad, beautiful novel if he had relied on telling the whole tragedy from this one evening, from a single moment. But even though it only had 200 pages, he also had to pack in a time panorama; he had to tell the crippling story of love how the two met at an anti-nuclear event; he had to imply abuse of Florence; he had to let Florence love classical music and Edward love rock and roll. He weighed them down with all the sociological baggage that just robbed them of the opportunity and the poetry of this one moment. "
Awards
The book was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2007 and received the Kulturnews Award in the same year .
Movie
In 2017 the story was filmed by Dominic Cooke , Saoirse Ronan and Billy Howle play the couple, Emily Watson a supporting role. The script was written by Ian McEwan.
Individual evidence
- ↑ The gap in the gums . In: Der Tagesspiegel , July 23, 2007. Retrieved October 5, 2013
- ↑ Unsuccessful sex on the wedding night . In: Die Welt , August 19, 2007. Retrieved October 5, 2013.
- ↑ Sex is just a vegetable, too . In: Die Zeit , August 8, 2007. Retrieved October 5, 2013
- ↑ www.themanbookerprize.com ( January 3, 2010 memento in the Internet Archive ), viewed March 26, 2010
- ↑ IMDb