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Article: How I hang on to hope in a tide of fear ; In our perilously changing world, where should we seek salvation? In science, declares Ian McEwan, who talks to BOYD TONKIN about his new novel, On Chesil Beach
- Article from:
- The Independent (London, England)
- Article date:
- April 6, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 2007 The Independent - London. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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If you stroll along the "infinite shingle" of Chesil Beach in
Dorset, as Ian McEwan did while composing his new novel, you will
find that millennia of tides and winds have "graded the size of
pebbles" along its 18-mile length, "with the bigger stones at the
eastern end". The writer went to check this out, and felt - as he
weighed the pebbles in his palms - that it was true.
Already, critics have lauded On Chesil Beach as a major
achievement from a painstaking micro-historian of the inner life.
Edward and Florence, its loving but fatally innocent couple, stumble
into a wedding-night disaster in the "buttoned-up", respectable
England of July 1962, the victims not merely of "their ...