Recently declared Britain’s “national writer” by The Times of London, Ian McEwan must also be counted on the short list of the world’s greatest writers of our time. In Chesil Beach, his new novella, McEwan tells the story of an ill-starred wedding night on England’s Dorset coast in 1962. In the very first line we learn that Florence and Edward, an aspiring concert musician and historian respectively, “were young, educated, and both virgins on this, their wedding night, and they lived in a time when a conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible.” Never has so momentous, and cataclysmic, a tale been told around an incident of premature ejaculation. As lurid as that sounds—and McEwan’s description of the couple’s nonconsummation is almost forensic in its clinical detail—this is a beautifully told tale that, despite its brevity, brilliantly captures a moment in time; it touches on universal themes of innocence, desire, and fate, and on the enduring consequences of human decisions made in moments of duress.