Love and care for strangers in Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach

Abstract

Shortlisted for the 2007 Booker Prize, Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach has received considerable academic attention, although to date there are few critical essays that address the novel. In particular, the author’s concern with people’s failure to love each other, miscommunication, and the problem of hospitality to strangers has not received the attention it deserves. In this novel, McEwan examines why two lovers fail to love each other, and, by extension, why people fail to do justice to strangers. In presenting a disastrous wedding night in 1962, he exposes love as a construction on both sides and points out the causes of its failure as well as impediments to mutual understanding.