for creative writing educators
for teachers of English

A squirt too far — a review of Chesil Beach

Read another ridiculous Ian McEwan novel, the denouement of which is laugh out loud funny. A poor unfortunate chap’s premature ejaculation on his wedding night in the 1960s leads to the break-up of his marriage and the effective demolition of his life. McEwan’s tone is serious, earnest, studied, descriptive, but he failed to convince me despite being garlanded with prizes and accolades. This was an absurd and unbelievable climax — pardon the pun — for me, up there with his last novel Saturday in which a reading of Matthew Arnold’s poem Dover Beach results in a violent thug seeing the error of his ways during a house break-in.

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