Book Review

[kenjari]

Atonement
by Ian McEwan

This book is extremely good - I enjoyed every sentence. It starts out in the 1930s at an English country house. Briony, 13 years old and the youngest daughter of the Tallis family witnesses the beginnings of the passionate love between her older sister Cecilia and Robbie Turner, the son of the family's housekeeper. Unable to fully comprehend adult emotions and interactions, Briony tragically misunderstands what she observes. This misunderstanding and its results have repercussions that span the rest of their lives.
McEwan does a most amazing job with his characters. Never have I seen a writer be so perceptive about the ambiguities and complexities of people's motivations. His sense of the inner life of a girl on border between childhood and adulthood is also extraordinary.
So much of Atonement seems to be about the ambiguity of these border states. At the beginning of the novel Briony at thirteen stands between girlhood and womanhood; Cecilia and Robbie are between and old companionship and a new intimacy; Britain itself is between wars. Later on in the book, McEwan repeatedly brings us up to the edge of change, without showing us the moment itself or even much of the other side. We follow Robbie as a soldier as he retreats through France to Dunkirk, but we stop as soon as he gets to the beach(1). We see Briony training to be a nurse, but we never see her working as a nurse. We see the preparations for the Blitz, but the book skips over the Battle of Britain itself.

(1) I often seem to find the bleakest parts of books the most beautiful. I thought that Robbie's trek through France was one of the best parts of Atonement, even though it is also the grimmest. Similarly, one of my favorite parts of Kavalier and Clay is Joe Kavalier's time in Antarctica.

Comments

[epilimnion.livejournal.com]

I loved Atonement too! One of the best books I have ever read. some of the key turning points in the plot I almost couldn't bear to read. It's amazing how he created so much tension in a novel. You can look away and pause any time you want, and yet, the way he sets the situations up, turning away only makes it worse. And the ambiguity of the end disturbs me to this day. I plan to read Enduring Love in January. We showed the film version as a sneak a year or two ago, and it is another amazing narrative.

[kenjari.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that ending was deeply affecting. I kept thinking "But how will I ever know what really happened to them?". But the rub is that they are fictional characters - what really happened is whatever the author and reader decide happened.

[epilimnion.livejournal.com]

Yeah. and yet I cared so much, all I wanted was to have someone in a position to definitively know reassure me that everything turned out fine.

[kenjari.livejournal.com]

Me too. In the end, you just have to choose which story is the "real" one. McEwan sets it up so that ultimately it's the reader who is the only one left to take up that position. Which is a very amazing and powerful way to make a statement about the nature of writing and of reading fiction.

[epilimnion.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, I forgot to declare that Atonement was one of the most intense reading experiences I've ever had. It broke my heart repeatedly, but in the way that only great literature can, I loved every minute of it.

[kenjari.livejournal.com]

Yes, absolutely.