I am an example of an inept bookseller. In a publisher's ideal world I should be reading the latest whatever. Sadly for publishers, I often read books months or years after they have been published. Over the years I have read a number of McEwan's novels: Amsterdam (1998), Atonement (2001), and Saturday (2005). I loved them all. When his novella-like novel, On Chesil Beach, (2007) was pressed into my hands recently, I had my doubts. The characters made me uncomfortable and I found myself cringing with a sense of foreboding. But the magic of the writing - the finely drawn characters, and remarkable insight into their passions and torments and the ways that we converse (and don't) - transformed my discomfort into a very special experience of complicated clarity, somehow peaceful and smooth - like finely polished pebbles.