Ian McEwan

Fiona Maye, a leading High Court judge, is called on to try an urgent case. For religious reasons, a seventeen-year-old boy is refusing the medical treatment that could save his life. It is Fiona who must ultimately decide whether he lives or dies and her judgement will have momentous consequences for them both.

In a hotel on the Dorset coast, overlooking Chesil Beach, Edward and Florence, who got married that morning, are sitting in their room, neither entirely able to suppress their anxieties about the wedding night to come...This is a story about how the entire course of a life can be changed by a gesture not made or a word not spoken.