...I saw years ago in a magazine. A man and woman lie together in bed in a hotel. At the foot of the bed is a suitcase with "Just Married" chalked on it. The two newlyweds are propped up in the bed, covers pulled up to their chins. The woman says, "Well, my mother didn't tell me either. Now what do we do?"

when i read the title and got a sense of the context, i thought not of 'on golden pond' but of the following lines from the waste land by eliiot:

'On Margate Sands.

I can connect

Nothing with nothing.

/guy

One thing that Ian McEwan illustrates vividly in Chesil Beach, is the fragility of life outcomes. The chance meeting of the lovers; the prevailing sexual mores of the early sixties, where sex was not for suppression, not scrutiny; the absence of experience and let’s face it - common sense of either Florence or Edward and the lack of family support in attempting a rapprochement. This concatenation of random conditions led ultimately to unfulfilled lives and deep chasms of regret.

An interesting counterpoint to the autodestruct encounter of the naive young lovers who both espouse the cause of unilateral disarmament, is the pragmatic view of the deterrent value of the Bomb taken by Florences’ philosopher mother. Nuclear deterrence which is based on the deepest misgivings about humanities baseness rather than a naïve concept of its goodness has so far has proved successful in preventing nuclear conflagration – let’s hope there is no ejaculatio-praecox in this confrontation.

Are the reviewer and the letter writers so estranged from English litterature culture that they don't connect the title of this book to Matthew Arnold's seminal poem about loss of faith and call to love as solace- "Dover Beach". At this point I'm not sure of the connection between the book and Arnold's poem, but McEwan can hardly have failed to have the latter in mind when choosing his title.

Some lovely evocative writing... but I must admit... don't sense the there there... English love this sort of polite sorry oh so sorry thing... ok... oops... then... buh bye... all of this sound and fury for that...?