I know men are supposed to think about sex a lot, but Ian McEwan must dwell on the delicate subject more than most.

According to the Philip Larkin poem Annus Mirabilis, sexual intercourse began in 1963, which does not bode well for newlyweds Edward and Florence, arriving at a hotel on the Dorset coach in July, 1962.

They are both anxious about the wedding night to come, and as the reader waits nervously with them while they pick at their evening meal in their hotel room, we learn about their pasts and how they met.

This is where McEwan is at his best, gradually painting a portrait of the backgrounds of these two young innocents.

Their home lives are vividly fleshed out, and it is these sections of the novella, where the author constructs their biographies, that are the most satisfying.

Florence plays in a string quartet and lives in a well-heeled hostel for young women in London, where men are not allowed.

Edward, whose family lives in the Chiltern Hills, likes blues guitarists, and their differing musical tastes offer a suggestion that further discord is to come.

Oxford, where the author lived until recently, looms large. Florence comes from a north Oxford family, and meets Edward when they attend a CND meeting in St Giles.

Edward's family is not as well off, but McEwan stops short of suggesting that their different social background contributes to their uneasy relationship.

Following the climax of this short novel, there is a section in which Edward, now in old age, recollects the fateful night. Some things are better left unspoken but not sex, according to McEwan, and it is the couple's inability to communicate, rather than their social backgrounds or inexperience between the sheets, that makes them incompatible.

On Chesil Beach will always be overshadowed by Atonement, but it is memorable in its own way, and worth more than one reading.