On Chesil Beach is a novel written by Ian McEwan about the changes in society on an example of the newlyweds, who had married in the early 1960s, before the sexual revolution. The novel was published in Britain in 2007.
An English society of the 1960s is shown there, where two people from different social layers, a man and a woman, meet. They have different interests and temperaments, they cannot fully get to know each other because of the accepted standard to preserve their virginity before the wedding, but they believe that they love each other. The action takes place intensely, the novel actually describes one evening interspersed with scenes from past. There is also a political aspect, fathers and children have different political views on the Soviet Union, nuclear weapons, etc.
As a result, the wedding night ends with catastrophe, and the newlyweds divorce immediately. Only in some time, many years later, the former young man, who has gone through the liberation of sexual mores and has a failed marriage, realizes that just because of his ignorance and misunderstandings, he could not hold the woman with a violin, the only one he loved.
On Chesil Beach is full of long sentences, they braid like a small maze, give summer heat, warm in the evenings. The key to the novel is in the end in a short phrase thrown by the author: "Now how can roll over the entire route of life because of inactivity."
At the end of the life both of them are filled to the brims with missed opportunities, their fate is turned on a poor path, and everything that happened after the wedding has brought them neither joy, nor great love nor a quiet family happiness.
The author blames the English education, class prejudices and remains of religion.
