Edward and Florence arrive at a Dorset hotel on their wedding night in 1962, both dreading what comes next. Neither can find the words. McEwan sets the entire novel on this single evening, flashing back through the courtship that brought two very different people together, and then showing — with forensic precision — how a single night’s failure to communicate undoes everything.

The prose is immaculate; McEwan at his most controlled. But therein lies the problem. The characters exist primarily as vehicles for the novel’s central thesis about repression, timing and missed connection, and it is difficult to care very much about either of them. The final pages, jumping forward in time, are genuinely affecting — but it took a while to get there.

Well crafted, but cold. Admired more than loved.