JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Here’s an extract from Ian McEwan’s new novel On Chesil Beach, out in April.

The first McEwan I ever read was Amsterdam. It’s about two old friends who make a pact to euthanise each other. They had been in love with the same woman, and at her funeral something happens. I bought the paperback at Powerbooks, then I went home and flipped through the pages. Before I knew it I’d read the whole thing (It’s short). In fact I remember where I was and what else I was doing when I read each of his books. Enduring Love in a bookstore cafe in Melbourne during the 1999 Australian Open. In Between The Sheets later that same year in a dormitory in Yale while watching the clothes go round the washing machine. Atonement while proofreading the first issue of Flip (Many errors escaped me; my mind was at Dunkirk). The Child In Time right after my mother died. It’s about a guy who loses his little daughter in a supermarket and is consumed with grief. A couple of years ago I was reading his post-9/11 novel Saturday when I heard that a bomb had gone off in a bus on Edsa.

There have been several film versions of McEwan. The Comfort of Strangers (Rupert Everett, Natasha Richardson, Christopher Walken) was very creepy. Haven’t seen First Love, Last Rites or The Cement Garden. I liked Enduring Love, in which Rhys Ifans stalks Daniel Craig (I understand perfectly). The movie of Atonement will be out later this year—it stars James MacAvoy, who is lovely, but slighter than the Robbie Turner I’d imagined.