{"id":4105,"date":"2026-05-05T07:21:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T13:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/?p=4105"},"modified":"2026-05-12T05:35:25","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T11:35:25","slug":"on-chesil-beach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/?p=4105","title":{"rendered":"On Chesil Beach"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Ian McEwan, 2007, Audiobook narrated by the author, Random House Audio \"1.5<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is another of a series of audiobooks by accomplished authors that have disappointed me. I have enjoyed McEwan’ books such as Atonement<\/em> and Machines Like Me<\/em>, but not this one. It’s about a man and a woman in 1962 who fall in love and get married, but due to their differing feelings about sex are not able to make it together. They break up on the night of their marriage and go their separate ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem I had with the book was that the man and the woman were essentially ordinary individuals and not very interesting. This was the same problem that McEwan’s book, Lessons<\/em>, had. The characters didn’t seem to interest me very much and the stories became very tedious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The audiobook came with an interview with Ian McEwan talking about what he was attempting to accomplish with the book. One aspect was the sexual mores of the England in the early 1960’s, a mix of repression and rebellion. He alluded to it somewhat in the book, but it didn’t seem to be a major theme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book shows up on Amazon as an “Amazon’s Choice” and it says it’s one of the best books of 2007. While it is well written, it is too irrelevant and boring for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Ian McEwan, 2007, Audiobook narrated by the author, Random House Audio This is another of a series of audiobooks by accomplished authors that have disappointed me. I have enjoyed McEwan’ books such as Atonement and Machines Like Me, but …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1],"tags":[15],"class_list":["post-4105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-uncategorized","tag-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4105"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4107,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4105\/revisions\/4107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}