Krishna
This is the story of Edward and Florence, two young people falling in love with each other, each struggling to hide their main weakness and control it. Edward is afraid of his temper, which sometimes gets the better of him and Florence is repelled by the very idea of physical sex.
She still loves Edward, cannot back away from the marriage and what naturally should come after. They get married and go to Chesil Beach (a hotel with the honeymoon suite) for their honeymoon. There, everything goes wrong, as Edward could not control himself enough and has a premature climax.
Already dreading the act of sex, Florence runs away and he follows her to Chesyl Beach to have a conversation. The conversation, though they don’t know it, shape their lives thereafter.
It is a very slow moving story. The ending is good and is in some ways evocative of his Atonement in terms of what could have been, if things had turned out slightly differently. It is a little satisfying to read the ending and finish the book, but it is almost not worth the wait, as you have to plod through some one hundred odd pages to get to the interesting stuff in the last fifteen pages or so.
Interesting in parts, but not a great read. It will get a 4/10 from me.
— Krishna