On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan

I was first introduced to McEwan by my sixth form English teacher, through a slim little book called The Child in Time, a small book with a massive impact, and he's been my companion ever since, shining a light on the unspoken areas of our world, lost children, incest, grief and despair, and writing about them with heartbreaking sparse beauty. Few other authors could write about the marriage night of a newly married couple and extend it into a book length heart wrenching tale of misunderstanding, social life in 1962, hierarchies of life coming from academia and money (her) and squalor and madness (him) and hinted at incest and its devastating consequences for both. A book that makes me hope that I can be less judgemental and more forgiving in my relationships. This is more tender than his usual, a beautiful elegy to lost opportunity that made me more determined to live and speak without restraint, McEwan always has something to teach me.

AZ: "It is June, 1962. In a hotel on the Dorset coast, overlooking Chesil Beach, Edward and Florence, who got married that morning, are sitting down to dinner in their room. Neither is entirely able to suppress their 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."