Volume 54, Number 12 · July 19, 2007
It Happened One Night
By Al Alvarez
On Chesil Beach
by Ian McEwan
Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 203 pp., $22.00
Ian McEwan first tackled the problem of virginity and how to lose it in 'Homemade,' the first story in his brilliant first book, First Love, Last Rites, published in 1975. When the adolescent narrator is introduced to the 'simple, inexpensive' pleasure of masturbation, he wonders 'if I could not dedicate my whole life to this glorious sensation—and I suppose looking back now that in many respects I have.' That was more than thirty years ago and in one way or another McEwan has kept his word.
Review, 2309 words
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