Much more satisfying than the mostly boring and often frustrating Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes, On Chesil Beach has many of the same concerns with memory and troubled sexual relations. It's a slim novel, more a novella really, and there are some major questions left in the reader's mind, but McEwan does characters beautifully, showing the salvationary but ultimately misguided inner thoughts and feelings that prompt the kind of self-defeating words and actions familiar to us all.