This short novel has at its core a calamitous wedding night between an inexperienced pair of characters in the early 1960s, the circumstances that led to this moment, and an epilogue describing the repercussions it left for one of the characters. Most of the focus is on the inner thoughts of the characters, making their feeble attempts to communicate with one another seem all the more pathetic. I pitied them in a way for how poorly they had been equipped for the task at hand, and I felt that McEwan told their story in a way calculated to make it difficult to assign all the blame to any one individual.