Goodreads | Atonement: A Novel

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McEwan's best book?	18	5 days ago, 07:14PM

Arctic rated it:

12/25/07

bookshelves: bookchallenge08, db, modern-lit, rgbc

Read in January, 2008

I like this book better the more I think about it. My initial reaction was that it was an elaborate bit of clever trickery, but the depth of the writing is what redeems it.

favorite quotes (possible spoilers):

Chapter 1

At the age of eleven she wrote her first story—a foolish affair, imitative of half a dozen folktales and lacking, she realized later, that vital knowingness about the ways of the world which compels a reader’s respect. But this first clumsy attempt showed her that t...more

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Martine rated it:

02/16/08

bookshelves: british, family-drama, favourites, film, historical-fiction, modern-fiction

Read in February, 2008

Having recently seen and loved the magnificent film adaptation, I decided to reread Atonement, which quite impressed me when it was first published. And guess what? It was an even more rewarding experience the second time around. Knowing what was coming -- knowing the plot twist at the end -- helped me focus on the quality of the writing rather than on the development of the story, and as always, McEwan's prose completely sucked me in. He is, quite simply, one of the most talented authors...more Having recently seen and loved the magnificent film adaptation, I decided to reread Atonement, which quite impressed me when it was first published. And guess what? It was an even more rewarding experience the second time around. Knowing what was coming -- knowing the plot twist at the end -- helped me focus on the quality of the writing rather than on the development of the story, and as always, McEwan's prose completely sucked me in. He is, quite simply, one of the most talented authors alive, and he uses his gift to great effect here.

I'm not really going to go into the plot here, because the less the first-time reader knows about the book, the better. Suffice it to say that it is about an imaginative thirteen-year-old who witnesses a few things she doesn't understand, draws the wrong conclusions and ends up ruining the lives of two people near and dear to her. The first half of the book deals with the event itself and the hours leading up to it; the second half deals with her attempts to, well, deal with it -- atone for it, so to speak.

As always, McEwan excels at setting the scene. His description of a hot summer afternoon in a 1935 English country house is lush and sumptuous, his evocation of a young soldier's struggle to reach home after the disastrous 1940 battle of Dunkirk is haunting, and his look into the horrors of a war-time London hospital is gruesome in all its detail. Amazingly, McEwan manages to find beauty even in the most horrific scenes, which is one of the things which set him apart as a writer. As usual, though, it's the psychological stuff that is really outstanding. McEwan has a knack for taking his readers deep into his characters' minds, letting them share their most intimate, most uncomfortable thoughts and feelings. Sometimes these thoughts are a little disturbing (those of you who have read his earlier works will know what I mean), but usually they have the effect of completely drawing the reader into the story. The latter is definitely the case in Atonement. By presenting the story from different perspectives and vantage points, McEwan provides the reader with a complete and engrossing view of a life-changing event and its aftermath. All the different perspectives ring true, and together they tell a marvellous tale of perception, loyalty, anger, secrets, lost love, shame, guilt, obsession with the past and -- yes -- atonement. And about writing, for more than anything else, Atonement is about the difference between fiction and reality, the power of the imagination and the human urge to write and rewrite history -- to write destiny and play God.

I've heard quite a few people say that they found the first half of the novel too slow and ponderous, wondering why McEwan felt the need to devote nearly two hundred pages to the events of a single day. Personally, I found that part of the book to be utterly brilliant in its rich, Woolf-like glory. As far as I'm concerned, the atmosphere of the first half is superbly drawn, with each character down to the most minor one being well realised and the tensions and suspense at work almost being made tangible. For me, it is the second half of the book which has problems (albeit minor ones), in that I found the jumps in time and perspective jarring and the (otherwise fascinating) chapter about Robbie's adventures in France somewhat unreal. Of course, there are good reasons for the slightly unreal quality of the Dunkirk chapter (which the film captured just brilliantly), but still, it didn't quite work for me; it felt a bit out of place. Thankfully, though, the rest of the book worked just wonderfully for me. Like other McEwan books, it left me with a haunting question -- 'What if...?'

As for McEwan's impressive insight into the mind of a thirteen-year-old girl, which other reviewers have called scary, I think that has everything to do with Briony's being a writer. She is hardly your average thirteen-year-old (I think even McEwan would have a hard time coming up with one of those!); rather she is a writer (a good one), and that, of course, is something McEwan knows all about. As a fellow writer, I greatly enjoyed seeing the world through Briony's eyes, and hope her author will live to her old age and write as many good books as he has her doing.
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Sarah rated it:

11/19/07

Read in November, 2007

In World War II England, 13-year-old Briony Tallis misinterprets her older sister’s love affair with their family’s gardener to be something much worse than what it is. Her innocence and partial understanding of the world begins a chain of events that tears the family apart and alters the course of the rest of the girl’s life.

Sounds a little dry, right? Wrong! I guess I forgot to mention that the book was written by Ian McEwan, the king of uncomfortable moments, weird sex stuff, the ro...more In World War II England, 13-year-old Briony Tallis misinterprets her older sister’s love affair with their family’s gardener to be something much worse than what it is. Her innocence and partial understanding of the world begins a chain of events that tears the family apart and alters the course of the rest of the girl’s life.

Sounds a little dry, right? Wrong! I guess I forgot to mention that the book was written by Ian McEwan, the king of uncomfortable moments, weird sex stuff, the rotating third-person close perspective, and - I’ll say it! - writing about the human psyche. While I’ve found some of his earlier books to be a little too uncomfortable (or, rather, too uncomfortable without good reason) or a little too sexually deviant (again, in the way that it seemed for shock value than with a reason), this was a freaking great book.

I think the one thing that makes this book so wonderful is McEwan’s eerily accurate understanding of how a 13-year-old girl’s mind works - her understanding of the world and her emotional reaction to it. Briony is trapped between childhood and adulthood. She’s old enough to recognize the dark and startling behind-the-scenes facets of her proper British family’s life, but not old enough to properly analyze or judge them. She’s old enough to impose her will and her ideas on others, but not wise enough to know when to act or when to question herself. It’s a frustrating and fascination (and uncomfortable) time, and he has it down pat.

McEwan also experiments with structure in ways that are truly innovative and new without being gimmicky. Briony is an aspiring writer who grows and develops her style throughout the 60 years that the novel covers, and McEwan’s novel mirrors her literary growth. Part One of the story is extremely traditional (broken into chapters, with a clear rotation of perspectives and a uniform chronology). Parts Two and Three are much more modern - the story, which switches gears to follow the gardener into WWII France and Briony to her experiences as a nurse in London, loses structure and fluidity and uses more modern storytelling techniques. Finally, the last section is utterly contemporary - the story becomes even more abstract, with unreliable narrators and more conceptual writing favored over simple narrative.

And yet these games with structure and story and perspective in no way take your focus from the story and the characters. Instead, they add to the experience of watching the main character grow and develop.

If the book suffers from anything, it might be a little slow in some places and move too fast in others. Since McEwan tends to be very thorough when it comes to interior thought, the story often slows down a bit more than it should so that he can explain how every single person felt about a certain moment in time (although the story spans 60 years, the first 200 pages span a single afternoon and evening). The slow story a necessary evil, though, if we want to keep the detailed character studies in place. And we do. And the action-filled second half of the book, which covers the British retreat from the Germans in 1940 and the over-capacity army hospitals of London, makes up for the sometimes austere and rigorous first half. It just takes a while to get the story rolling.
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Anna rated it:

04/30/08

bookshelves: novels

Funny story about how I came to read Ian McEwan's novel, Atonement.

It must have been a year-and-a-half ago when my old college pal Chris recommended it to me (you know Chris as a frequent credit on the more interesting links posted around here). I acknowledged his suggestion, filed it in the back of my mind, and, as I do with so many book suggestions, expected to let it incubate there--remembering it when I browsed bookstores, perking up to reviews and commentary about it, and waiting for th...more

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Kate rated it:

03/24/08

Read in March, 2008

Four stars for the exquisite, lush descriptions in Part 1. Astute insight into a variety of characters and their motivations. The details of a single day made me feel I was there. (My frustrations at the ending make it a grudging four stars.)

I read Part 1 with suspense (even trepidation) at every turn, but it was fueled by information on the book's cover--telling me that Briony would accuse Robbie of a crime and it would change their lives forever. (I am not sure how I would have reacted...more Four stars for the exquisite, lush descriptions in Part 1. Astute insight into a variety of characters and their motivations. The details of a single day made me feel I was there. (My frustrations at the ending make it a grudging four stars.)

I read Part 1 with suspense (even trepidation) at every turn, but it was fueled by information on the book's cover--telling me that Briony would accuse Robbie of a crime and it would change their lives forever. (I am not sure how I would have reacted to this section without that knowledge. This detracts from the book's inherent power, having to rely upon the cover copywriters.) The long descriptions of each moment, with its smells and light, prolonged this delicious agony. Parts 2 & 3 flew by in comparison, with the crime already committed and the days and years described succinctly.

I am especially impressed with McEwan's understanding of how a 13-year-old girl, in her immature, orderly, and righteous ways, would feel revolted, defiled, and betrayed by the idea of blatant adult sexuality. I can believe she would respond as she does, and that she would be unable to distinguish between a maniac and a lover.

Class is a major theme, and who can argue with the classism McEwan portrays? The evil rich prosper and the innocent poor are squashed underfoot. An interlocking theme is freedom--to choose a path and live your life. Of course, there is also loss of innocence ("she was still wearing the filthy white dress").

***SPOILERS BELOW!***

I feel cheated by the revelation in the last pages, of fiction within fiction. If the whole book is Briony's version of the story, it should be first-person. Of course, this is the main theme of this novel--the creator of fiction wields considerable control over others, concealing or changing words at his/her own whim. So I think McEwan wants to piss us off to make his point. Why else "deceive" the reader, then "un-deceive?" He seems to say that readers want a "happy ending," but I'd rather have a tragic one and know it than have "happy" one ripped away from me. Briony creates the false happy ending (the one she wishes had happened) for her own selfish reasons, and perhaps it helps her sleep at night.

The book's title is never achieved for me: Briony cannot atone for her wrong. She wants her novel to be an atonement. She wants her service as a nurse to atone. But, for Robbie and Cecilia, the damage cannot be undone. Briony spends her life having to assuage her conscience through her writing. But she lives a long, prosperous/satisfyingly successful, comfortable life, so I feel her novel is too little, way too late.

What about Briony's experience with the West Indian, lawyer cabbie? You can't tell who's educated nowadays, she says. That should have been true for Robbie in 1935 and she knows it.

Where are the reliable, loyal men among the characters? Not Jack Tallis, absent father who can't even get home in an emergency. Not Leon, who is married four times and can't seem to commit to the profession he studied. Only Robbie is "innocent" (although the consensual fornication he commits with Cecilia in the library would have been a crime in 1935 though it is not to modern readers), and he is accused by the pillars of society. Perhaps the blue-collar men are reliable and loyal--the constable, the servants, the soldiers. They also have to jump when the rich say jump (make a roast on the hottest day of the year, die in the war, etc.).

I'm also not convinced of some plot elements: Wouldn't Cecilia make some argument as to Robbie's innocence--wouldn't it be heard by someone--or is her testimony nullified by her indecent acts in the library, acts I'm not sure are fully revealed? Couldn't she appeal to the sister who wanted to protect her--do they never talk after that night? Would Lola marry Marshall (I can't give 20-year-old Lola the same inability to distinguish between maniac and lover that I can allow in 13-year-old Briony)? Would Marshall seek a legitimate relationship with Lola? How can the lifelong prosperity of the Marshalls, shown by Briony in the final section, have had its beginnings in the violent, hateful acts we witness in 1935 (rape is not an act of sex, it is an act of violence)? Would Jackson and Pierrot be close, life-long family members of Briony, while their sister Lola is estranged from Briony? I feel including Jackson and his descendants in the final birthday party for Briony is a convenient plot element, but not believable....less

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Terry rated it:

01/12/08

Read in December, 2007

This is where a 2.5 star rating would be ideal. I am extremely ambivalent about this novel--first the pluses: the writing is gorgeous; McEwan has some of the best prose out there. Every line has meat to it, nothing is throwaway, and every visual is so vivid that the reader is transported to a specific time and place. Secondly, (what everyone praises the novel for), the commentary McEwan is making about the novel itself--the fact that it is written, that characters and plots are manipulated by th...more This is where a 2.5 star rating would be ideal. I am extremely ambivalent about this novel--first the pluses: the writing is gorgeous; McEwan has some of the best prose out there. Every line has meat to it, nothing is throwaway, and every visual is so vivid that the reader is transported to a specific time and place. Secondly, (what everyone praises the novel for), the commentary McEwan is making about the novel itself--the fact that it is written, that characters and plots are manipulated by the author, and how a real character emerges (eventually) while at the same a written story exists too. This is very difficult to write about without revealing anything about the plot, but as one reads the novel, it becomes clear what McEwan is trying to do. Finally, the references to other literature (including some of the best novels--Clarissa, Lolita--and novelists--Elizabeth Bowen is directly mentioned, Henry Green and Virginia Woolf are obvious influences) is fluid, never forced, and is done to showcase a love of literature.
At the same time, there are downsides to McEwan's endeavor--how to write a novel that is commenting on its obvious falsity (its construction as fiction), while at the same time trying to convey reality. This is perhaps an impossible task, and I'm left with the nagging feeling that the novel wants to have its cake and eat it too. The characters and situations are so obviously phony that it becomes distracting in the first part of the story. I was drawn in by the fantastic writing, but then found myself wanting to hurl the novel across the room at some of the ridiculous choices by both the characters and the novelist. Namely: 1) The main plot twist makes little realistic sense. Absolutely zero would fly in a mystery novel let alone real life; 2) The characters in the first part are boring aristocrats who we don't care about (check out a Henry Green novel; except in his novels, the reader continues to laugh at them, there is no attempt at emotional attachment); 3) The 'mystery's' solution is obvious to the reader before the crime even happens; 4) Briony (part 1) is an insufferable narrator (as kid narrators, To Kill a Mockingbird excluded, so often are); 5) The novelist's choice to name a sexually, precocious teenager 'Lola' (too obvious a reference). But these choices are meant to be ridiculous--reality is only supposed to set in in the epilogue. At the same time, I marveled at how real parts 2 (Robbie at war) and 3 (Briony as a nurse--some of the hospital scenes are the best I've ever read) seemed to be. Then the question became for me--if they seemed real because of the way the scenes were written (the gore again in the hospital), but could not have been real because the characters and overall plot of the Tallis family are so fake, isn't that cheating? I haven't reached a conclusion yet, but something is still bugging me about the conception of it. Ultimately I prefer novels that go the opposite route--Paul Auster's Oracle Night for example--that start out real and quickly become fake, or throw out the idea of a realistic, consistent plot entirely (only in the conclusion does David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas come together), rather than the never-ending 'is it real? is it fake?' push-and-pull of Atonement. ...less

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Amy rated it:

(review of isbn 0307388840)

03/27/08

Read in March, 2008

**NOTE: Spoilers included: I like the experience of reading a book and then seeing the movie, which is why I read this book. Both the book and the movie are highly acclaimed, so what could be a better choice?

I haven’t yet seen the movie since I just finished the book today, but perhaps I should have read "No Country For Old Men" instead.

100 pages into this book, I wanted to just give up. It felt like something that would have been forced on me by high school English tea...more **NOTE: Spoilers included: I like the experience of reading a book and then seeing the movie, which is why I read this book. Both the book and the movie are highly acclaimed, so what could be a better choice?

I haven’t yet seen the movie since I just finished the book today, but perhaps I should have read "No Country For Old Men" instead.

100 pages into this book, I wanted to just give up. It felt like something that would have been forced on me by high school English teachers, with all the descriptive, flowery language about British aristocratic characters, scenery, and architecture in 1935 that I just couldn’t bring myself to care about. Were it not for the knowledge that Briony was going to commit a crime (based on the back of the book), I would have definitely put it down. Even so, I thought the crime would have been something worse than perjury – taking approximately 170+ pages to build up to the crime better damn well be murder! (joking) – but nonetheless, her crime tore her family apart, which was bad. But still, taking up 170+ pages to describe one afternoon (as many people on this site have noted) was unnecessary. And even though the writing style was beautiful, elegant, etc., it seemed like nothing really *happened;* it was mostly thoughts, memories, and physical descriptions, much of which were irrelevant to the actual plot. Maybe that’s just my preference for reading books in which the characters actually DO something and TALK to each other. I mean, don’t get me wrong, a little description is ok and necessary, but this just took it to the extreme. I know McEwan was just trying to show the depth of the characters at play, thus getting the reader to care more about them and make the impact of what was about to happen more forceful, but he overdid it to the point of making me not care at all. I didn’t think the plot of this book really needed such in-depth description.

However, Parts 2 & 3 changed gears and definitely picked up; it was like reading a completely different book! I enjoyed reading about Robbie’s traumatic escape from France during the Battle of Dunkirk, and Briony’s experience as a nurse tending to the wounded/dead of World War II. Both sections were a refreshing contrast to the superficial, snobbish feel of the first section of the book (not that war is refreshing).

One thing I thought the book was missing and should have elaborated on more rather than the tedious Part 1 was the immediate aftermath of Briony’s crime. After the crime occurs, the plot immediately jumps to Robbie in France during the war, and we are told very little of what happened in the 3 year period of time between the crime itself, Robbie’s prison sentence, and his eventual deployment. We know that Robbie had aspired to go to medical school, but was the outcome of the novel a result of Briony’s crime or World War II? Even if Briony committed no crime, wasn’t Robbie’s being drafted to the war and eventual separation from Cecilia inevitable?

Despite being unsure if the novel’s outcome was the result of war or a childhood crime, unlike what some posters on this site have written, I actually liked the ending. I liked the revelation that the story was a novel within a novel, and an attempt at atonement that never happens in (Briony’s fictional) reality. If Briony had went on to talk to her family, lawyers, and legally retracted her false statement, and then Cecilia and Robbie lived happily ever after and forgave Briony, the novel would have been merely a glorified version of Briony’s juvenile The Trials of Arabella. Maybe it’s just me, but happy, neat endings in movies, books, etc. sometimes just get old. Life is just not that perfect, and the fact is, seemingly innocuous actions in the present may lead to consequences that can never be redeemed.

Overall, the length and weightiness of the first part of the book is why I only gave it 2 stars, but if that section had been condensed into, say, 50 pages or less, I would have given it 5 stars.

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Élizabeth rated it:

01/07/08

bookshelves: p--language-and-literature

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

A few years ago, I was reading an issue of Granta, and found myself immersed in a short story by Ian McEwan. It was one of the best stories I'd ever read, and when I finished reading it, it was one of the few times I've ever thought, God, I wish I could have written that. I wanted that control of language, that mastery of the narrative, and I was in awe of the skill it took to create that piece.

Eventually, I recycled that issue of Granta -- it's a thick journal, as literary journals go, abou...more A few years ago, I was reading an issue of Granta, and found myself immersed in a short story by Ian McEwan. It was one of the best stories I'd ever read, and when I finished reading it, it was one of the few times I've ever thought, God, I wish I could have written that. I wanted that control of language, that mastery of the narrative, and I was in awe of the skill it took to create that piece.

Eventually, I recycled that issue of Granta -- it's a thick journal, as literary journals go, about 250 pages in each issue -- but before doing so, I was careful to cut out the pages the McEwan story was on, and clip them together with a binder clip. I'm sure that story is still somewhere in my childhood home; I could never bring myself to get rid of it, in any of my periodic cleaning sweeps.

Imagine my shock, when today, trying to distract myself from the pain in my foot, I tugged down Ian McEwan's Atonement, and found that short story again. The retreat from Dunkirk is about 190 pages into my copy of the novel (yes, I read it all today, I'm a really fast reader and I was concentrating because my foot hurt like a -- well), and re-reading it, with the preceding chapters still fresh in my mind, settled the matter for me. I was right to cut out those pages, and I'm still in awe of the skill McEwan wields.

I'd been plunged into a very different world for almost two hundred pages, caught up by the lush language and the intimacy of the family setting, and then suddenly to be confronted with the violence of the retreat from Dunkirk, still cloaked in McEwan's incredible way of writing, was just amazing. And the plot, which begins slowly, is ultimately very satisfying; it's never resolved traditionally, we're never sure of what happened, but it's tied up so neatly, with the stunning twist at the end of the part of the novel written in third-person, which is so tiny you might not notice, that it becomes something far more than we expected.

Everyone, I suspect, knows my love for unreliable narrators and epistolary fiction narrative-within-narrative, and this satisfies those kinks in the most subtle way I've ever come across. Add the fantastic use of language, the complexity and completeness of the universe (the throwaways are just amazing in their richness), and the excellent characterization, and there is no way I wasn't going to love this. The fact that McEwan writes rape -- and adolescent rape at that -- wasn't enough to put me off, although I wish we followed Lola as well; watching how the rape played out for the convicted Robbie and the accuser Briony (and it's a nice touch separating the victim from the accuser) as well as Cecelia, who's torn between her family and her lover (and possibly I really fell for her when she deliberately turned her back on her family -- I didn't like her much through the first part, but when she chooses Robbie and sticks by him, and when she doesn't give in when Briony visits, I was enchanted), but I had no real sense of what happened to Lola internally, right after the rape. The marriage is a fascinating thing, but...I'd have liked a scene in which she suggests, a little, a very little, that maybe it wasn't Robbie and Briony insists, "I know it was him, I saw him, I know it was him," and she gives way under the considerable force of Briony's personality.

But as I say, I'm not rational about this. This is a story I love, and will be rereading, not just for the pleasure of the novel, but in order to learn from it.

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Leigh rated it:

07/31/07

bookshelves: national-book-critics-circle, novels, war-literature, wwii

When I'd just finished Part I, I wrote this:

"More than a little reminiscent of Woolf in its converging and diverging viewpoints, its serious concern with the portrayal of social and interior life... and of course the dinner-party scene. That part, I loved. I wasn't as keen on the latter third or so of Part One, with its tiring proleptic hints of deferred tragedy, and Part Two thus far is slow going--which is surprising, as it's the WWII pa...more When I'd just finished Part I, I wrote this:

"More than a little reminiscent of Woolf in its converging and diverging viewpoints, its serious concern with the portrayal of social and interior life... and of course the dinner-party scene. That part, I loved. I wasn't as keen on the latter third or so of Part One, with its tiring proleptic hints of deferred tragedy, and Part Two thus far is slow going--which is surprising, as it's the WWII part! But it's early yet."

Funnily enough, it took McEwan till Part Three to acknowledge that Briony is, in fact, a Woolf wannabe. Despite being a perfectly good portrayal of men at war and of a dramatic historical moment (the evacuation from Dunkirk) that's mostly overlooked by historical fiction, Part Two never did manage to impress me. Mostly, I think we weren't given enough emotional insight into Robbie in Part One, so being dropped into war-torn Europe with him in Part Two was no more than abstractly affecting. I also couldn't tell how much of the "mystery" from Part One was supposed to be telegraphed, but there were no surprises for me in the final revelations.

That said, I loved the Tallis women, and was particularly impressed by McEwan's insights into what it means to be a woman; see Briony's wry observation in the closing section about the veteran colonel who resents the feminine presumption of writing about war. Overall, Part Three was by far the most compelling as a narrative, and after a lot of vacillating, I was finally sold on the book by the final section, where all its slightly precious metafictive devices were finally justified. For some reason, McEwan writing about Briony writing about Briony learning to write (i.e., her insight while watching the fountain scene) just felt self-indulgent. But when the last level settled into place--McEwan writing about Briony writing about Briony writing about Briony learning to write--I got interested in what he was saying. I don't know how that works.

Moreover, what could have felt pat and cynical in that final section (the author's deceptions and conflations, the rewritten happy ending, the dreaded first-person flash-forward to The Present) was actually quite moving and smart.

And for this passage alone, I thought the novel was worth my time:

The problem these fifty-nine years has been this: how can a novelist achieve atonement when, with her absolute power of deciding outcomes, she is also God? There is no one, no entity or higher form that she can appeal to, or be reconciled with, or that can forgive her. There is nothing outside her. In her imagination she has set the limits and the terms. No atonement for God, or novelists, even if they are atheists. It was always an impossible task, and that was precisely the point. The attempt was all.

(The little echo of Hamlet in "The attempt was all" didn't hurt either.)
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Allison rated it:

01/23/08

bookshelves: fiction

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in January, 2008

I feel that perhaps I have sabotaged this book somewhat as I read it directly after finishing Love In the Time of Cholera, and perhaps in retrospect should have read a poetry book or some non-fiction in between. Clearly anything I would have read after finishing a Masterpiece would pale in comparison but I decided that the critical raves this book had received and high praise from people around me should be enough to encourage me to see it through to the end.

Here is why I found this book lac...more I feel that perhaps I have sabotaged this book somewhat as I read it directly after finishing Love In the Time of Cholera, and perhaps in retrospect should have read a poetry book or some non-fiction in between. Clearly anything I would have read after finishing a Masterpiece would pale in comparison but I decided that the critical raves this book had received and high praise from people around me should be enough to encourage me to see it through to the end.

Here is why I found this book lacking without giving too much actual plot away to those who would want to read it themselves.

I found all of the characters completely devoid of any true personality or any reason I should care or feel connected to them. The details described in the book do a lot for physical surroundings but we know nothing of Cecila except she went to college and chain smokes, so I don't particularly care about anything that happens to her, besides the fact that much of her life is lived outside what information the book provides. Briony is a terrible child, a narcissistic teenager, and and at last a harmless grandmother who I don't especially care about at any of these three points in her life. The only character with the least bit of humanity seems to be Robbie who is still somewhat confined to his role as the "victim". All the lovely descriptions of ponds and hospital wards and French war-torn villages could not make up for the fact that none of these characters were the slightest bit interesting to me or seemed to connect to anything. They simply floated through long locational descriptions being powerless to the world around them and unfortunately for me I didn't need 350 pages to get that point. It could have easily been accomplished as a short story or novella. I just kept feeling that the book had all this great detail but didn't focus it on anything that it shoud have.

I know this may sound exceedingly harsh and once again I do chalk some of this up to reading Atonement directly after a much better novel it had no hope in eclipsing or even paralleling in its structure but I also know how quickly and easily I fall in love with characters. How quickly I can get pulled into a good story and I sincerely feel that although I wouldn't call this book a complete waste, that my time would have been much better spent elsewhere....less

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Gina rated it:

(review of isbn 0307388840)

04/26/08

bookshelves: 4-stars

Read in April, 2008

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I really enjoyed this book because is resonated with a lot of life experiences I have had - migraines, sister-to-sister competition over a boy/man, issues with social class (as most people have had experience with), and more.

I must admit I was happy to be finished with the section about fighting the Germans in France. It just seemed to go on and on and belabor the points the author was trying to make about suffering, loss, and the question of "will he make it out of there?" The part ...more I really enjoyed this book because is resonated with a lot of life experiences I have had - migraines, sister-to-sister competition over a boy/man, issues with social class (as most people have had experience with), and more.

I must admit I was happy to be finished with the section about fighting the Germans in France. It just seemed to go on and on and belabor the points the author was trying to make about suffering, loss, and the question of "will he make it out of there?" The part about the French shooting their cavalry horses as part of their admittance of defeat (and the large numbers of horses shot) made my stomach turn - as someone who owns a horse and pony and really can't see the point in killing them all, I mean really - why?

I like the way the book was set up - where you get the happy ending you so want, but then the truth which in your heart, you knew had to be true. The odds of the main character getting back to his love in England seemed so remote with the descriptions of the thousands, or tens of thousands, of soldiers awaiting rescue boats when air craft bombers could so easily sink them.

I was impressed with the father character despite his alienation of his wife and daughters because of the way he gave his hired help a house (after her husband, the gardener died) and gave the boy every opportunity to excel in life.

In this day and age, his alienation of his wife (and presumably the mistress he had) would be deplorable, but being from Irish descent myself, I know that "not divorcing" and taking on a mistress, but then finally settling with your spouse for your golden years is something that is still not at all uncommon in many parts of Europe.

My heart aches for the mother, and I absolutely love the authors descriptions of the migraines that plague her every moment, rob her of time with her children, and basically control her life. I have lived this life - similarly at least (no kids, but plenty other things that the "black panther" of a migraine chose to ruin - holidays, final exams, sporting events, etc.). The way the author analogizes the wife having to control her thoughts and actions to keep the migraine beast at bay are the best descriptions I've ever come across. For any reader who has suffered migraines on a regular basis, it is a strange feeling to see them so well described, when such excruciating pain seems so indescribable.

Briony, the younger daughter's love for writing, dashing princes, the underdog prince winning the beautiful girl, etc. resonated with me since I loved those stories as a little girl. I also loved to write, keep a journal, and even write plays for my sister and me to perform for my parents. The way she lays blame for the incident in the garden on the wrong person, and so adamantly, was very disturbing. That's where my similarities ended. I kept waiting and hoping for her to come clean and at least confess that she wasn't sure of what she saw.

Despite the movie awards this book spawned, I have heard more negative than positive movie reviews. That's why I chose to read the book. Because I had so many similar life experiences, I found the book quite enjoyable (except for the mass killings of the French cavalry horses). McGregor does a very good job in his descriptions of the house and scenery, the children and other characters, and most amazingly - his analogies of "the migraine". He must know first-hand what it feels like!...less

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Jessica rated it:

09/26/07

Read in September, 2007

recommends it for: liars

This is the first book I've read by this guy, and I really enjoyed it. You know who I'd recommend this book to, but I don't think it'd fit in that little box up there? Okay, you know how sometimes you're craving a certain kind of musical style, like sixties soul, say, or classic British punk, but you don't actually want to listen to old music, you want to listen to something that's, like, of the now? There're a few (okay, not many) bands out there that don't just do hollow retro imitations, but ...more This is the first book I've read by this guy, and I really enjoyed it. You know who I'd recommend this book to, but I don't think it'd fit in that little box up there? Okay, you know how sometimes you're craving a certain kind of musical style, like sixties soul, say, or classic British punk, but you don't actually want to listen to old music, you want to listen to something that's, like, of the now? There're a few (okay, not many) bands out there that don't just do hollow retro imitations, but sort of take what they love from the classics, and somehow make that new and fresh and appropriate to our time. I'd say this book is like that: it's the perfect thing if you're after an exquisitely written modernist novel, only you don't actually want to get into the musty old canon, and would like something new. Honestly, I think this actually works better with fiction than with music.... In any case, this guy can sure put together a sentence, let me tell you! Beautiful, beautiful sentences. They made me a little ashamed of myself. Actually, they made me a lot ashamed, but I was enjoying it so much that I didn't feel bad.

I'm a little hesitant about putting this in my book report, because I really do recommend this book and I'd like you to read it, but I have to say that I did find the last chapter hugely disappointing. It did have one instant where it went a ways toward redeeming itself at the end, but on the whole it was kind of like.... I don't know. It didn't ruin the book or anything, but it made me feel like Ian McEwan might be something slightly less than the incredible, sublime sentence-crafting god I'd been picturing him as. I mean, I guess he looks pretty ordinary on the back photo, which should have been a tip-off. Isn't there some culture's artistic tradition that's like that, where they purposely don't finish or add imperfections in their statues, to remind humanity that nothing we make can all that great? Well, the little coda at the end of _Atonement_ kind of hit me like that. To be sure, the author is extremely talented... but he is mortal, like the rest of us.

Yeah, the ending is dumb alright.

Worse than dumb, it's poorly executed. I understand why he felt he needed it, and the impulse was a good one. However, its function should have been accomplished with the grace and style all previous chapters had, and in my opinion it wasn't. It was just off, to me: like a great restaurant with mediocre desserts.

Anyway, it was still a great book. I'm curious if other people agree with me about this, or if I just sound cranky. I was just looking at other Bookster reviews, and everyone else seems to be like, "I didn't really take to this book until I got to the fabulous ending!" So obviously there's no accounting for (everyone else's) taste....less

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Bart rated it:

09/12/07

Read in September, 2007

recommends it for: Literary fiction aficionados

That I can remember, I've never before disliked the start of a book so thoroughly, and by the end, gone on to think so much of it as a complete work.

The last 2/3 of this novel are as good as contemporary fiction gets. The first 1/3 is like reading a Jane Austen plot trapped in amber.

As the title indicates Atonement is about a future artist's massive effort to redeem herself for ruining the character of a young man when she is a younger girl. There are parts of this novel that ar...more That I can remember, I've never before disliked the start of a book so thoroughly, and by the end, gone on to think so much of it as a complete work.

The last 2/3 of this novel are as good as contemporary fiction gets. The first 1/3 is like reading a Jane Austen plot trapped in amber.

As the title indicates Atonement is about a future artist's massive effort to redeem herself for ruining the character of a young man when she is a younger girl. There are parts of this novel that are disjointed - or if they aren't they appear so because the opening act moves so slowly that one is barely conscious and later unable to recall that anything much happened at all.

Halfway through this novel, when its greatness starts to happen, a reader almost laments his earlier opinions of it. But whose fault is that? The beginning is such an act of endurance that the later parts make a reader wish that McEwan had moved things more quickly in the beginning - and used those words for more character development in the middle - so the reader could declare this novel, unequivocally, one of the five best novels he's ever read.

McEwan is at the top of the art form throughout, though, whatever a reader opines of the product. He knows what he's doing every step of the way, right down to an allusion to the disjointed narrative methods employed by Virginia Woolf.

The ending is brilliant, unexpected and harsh. But unlike the case of the returning Baxter character in the third act of Saturday, this ending is consistent and at once surprising and inevitable.

After a person has read a few hundred novels, he grasps the art form well enough to know when an author is writing - usually it's when the author's employing some top-heavy descriptive technique that makes the water droplets gathered on a rose petal somehow more important than the protagonist's motives for anything she's done to that point - and it fairly well cries out, "Look at me, my creator is a writer!"

Knowing when an author is writing means knowing that if there's a surprise coming, it's either going to be predicted about 50 pages out or done in such fantastically poor form that its inconsistency mars the rest of the work.

McEwan is fine enough at his craft that the ending is both unanticipated and perfectly consistent. That alone makes this novel excellent....less

Atonement: A Novel

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