J. M. Coetzee, Summertime

Paul Theroux, The Elephanta Suite

Tony Judt, Postwar

Paul Theroux, Saint Jack

Jérôme Grondeux, La France entre en République

Matthew Stewart, The Courtier and the Heretic - Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World

T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land and Other Poems

Mark Leier, Bakunin

Joseph Conrad, The Shadow-Line

Ellen Schrecker (editor), Cold War Triumphalism

J. M. Coetzee, Boyhood

Stephen F. Cohen, Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives

J. L. Carr, A Month in the Country

Hooman Majd, The Ayatollah Begs to Differ

Elaine Dundy, The Dud Avocado

Aravind Adiga, Between the Assassinations

Ian Pears, Stone's Fall

Geoffrey Houselhold, Rogue Male

Roberto Bolaño, Nazi Literature in the Americas

André Aciman, False Papers

George Macdonald Fraser, Flash for Freedom

L . J. Davis, A Meaningful Life

Imre Kertész, Detective Story

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust

Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac

Daniel Liebowitz, Charles Pearson, The Last Expedition

Richard Aldous, The Lion and the Unicorn

Paulo Francis, Carne Viva

David Grann, The Lost City of Z

Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian

Susan Jacoby, The Age of American Unreason

Having fun!

Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Roberto Bolaño, 2666

John Banville, The Sea

Ian McEwan, On Chesil Beach

Ian McEwan seems to be sitting in a sort of literary throne, lording over contemporary British letters - at least by the fawning reviews coming from the critics. Following the intricacies and inventiveness of "Atonement", McEwan produced the inescusable "Saturday", and now comes this slender volume.

We meet Edward and Florence on their wedding night, in a hotel by Chesil Beach in 1962 - the date is never spelled out, only references made to Kennedy, McMillan and his "night of the long knives":

They were young, educated, and both virgins on this, their wedding night, and they lived in a time when a conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible. But it is never easy.

Indeed it isn't. Edward is the classic McEwan innocent, caught up by the world and people around him. Somehow living a chaste, academic life (punctuated by the occasional bar brawl), Edward has bypassed the early 60s zeitgeist, and enters his nupcial chambers as a Victorian gentleman, literally ready to burst.

Florence comes from a well-off family - her father a successful businessman, her mother a detached academic - and yet the family embraces the penniless Edward, supporting the wedding and their daughter's choice.

The crux of the novel is Florence's incapacity for sexual enjoyment, her disgust of human (male) anatomy and aversion to intimacy. Knowing full well the implications of their wedding night, Florence begins the novel in terror of what's to come next. In studied flashbacks, we learn about the beginnings of their courtship, their families and expectations for the new life together about to begin.

The night unfolds from there. McEwan is a serious writer, has an eye for the minute detail in relationships and creates a believable atmosphere of longing and sexual temptation. Most of this brief novel unfolds satisfactorily, until the underwhelming epilogue.

Without giving away the resolution of their first night, there's seems a disconnect between what we just read and the conclusions the narrator and Edward seem to take from the incident years later. McEwan plays again with the timescale, but while in "Atonement" the reminiscence was the very point of the story, this time the shift seems like an afterthought, neither coherent nor true.

J. M. Coetzee, In the Heart of the Country

Richard Hughes, A High Wind in Jamaica

Remembering Italy!

Niall Ferguson, The Ascent of Money

Quote of the day

"Les cimetières sont pleins d'hommes indispensables" - Charles de Gaulle.

Ian Fleming, Quantum of Solace

Marc Bressant, La dernière Conférence

Atiq Rahimi, Syngué sabour

Matthew J. Bruccoli and Judith S. Baughman, Conversations with John le Carré

Patrick French, The World is What It Is

Ennio Morricone, The Complete Edition

Émile Zola, La Faute de L'Abbé Mouret

Un certain regard

Paris, 12/28/2008.