On Chesil Beach: Book and DVD Special by Ian McEwan and Douglas Biro Reviewed by Christopher Hitchens
The Atlantic Monthly
"A recent article in the London Sunday Times made the matter-of-fact statement that Ian McEwan had emerged in Britain as 'our national writer.' I at once understood the justice of this opinion, but without at first being able to say what commanded my assent. A reading of McEwan's latest novella allows one to be fractionally less vague. The 'national' character of this literary fragment is to be found in its simultaneous evocations of time and place, which allow the reader ? at any rate the reader of a certain age who is of English provenance ? to locate himself with satisfaction in an identifiable geography at a given date...." Read the entire Atlantic Monthly review.