I heart Ian McEwan

I heart Ian McEwan....I haven't read one of his book for such a long time, and On Chesil Beach brought it all flooding back to me.

He's a controversial author, but I can forget about all that when I open one of his books. I'm completely won over by the devastating subtlety of his writing.

In On Chesil Beach he unfolds a whole relationship through the filter of the couple's wedding night. It's a slim volume, but he captures the tension, all the insecurities, anticipation and longing in that pivotal moment in their lives:

'And what stood in their way? Their personalities and pasts, their ignorance and fear, timidity, squeamishness, lack of entitlement or experience or easy manners, then the tail end of a religious prohibition, their Englishness and class, and history itself. Nothing much at all.'