How long does it take to read On Chesil Beach?
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan takes about 3 hours 16 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 3 hours 16 minutes
A weekend read
First published 2007. 178 pages, about 48,950 words.
7 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 5 hours 26 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 3 hours 16 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 2 hours 2 minutes |
The page count is the median across 30 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
A novel of remarkable depth and poignancy from one of the most acclaimed writers of our time.It is July 1962. Florence is a talented musician who dreams of a career on the concert stage and of the perfect life she will create with Edward, an earnest young history student at University College of London, who unexpectedly wooed and won her heart. Newly married that morning, both virgins, Edward and Florence arrive at a hotel on the Dorset coast. At dinner in their rooms they struggle to suppress their worries about the wedding night to come. Edward, eager for rapture, frets over Florence's response to his advances and nurses a private fear of failure, while Florence's anxieties run deeper: she is overcome by sheer disgust at the idea of physical contact, but dreads disappointing her husband when they finally lie down together in the honeymoon suite.Ian McEwan has caught with understanding and compassion the innocence of Edward and Florence at a time when marriage was presumed to be the outward sign of maturity and independence. On Chesil Beach is another masterwork from McEwan--a story of lives transformed by a gesture not made or a word not spoken.
Subjects: Virginity, College students, Married people, Fiction, Intimacy (Psychology), Women musicians
