Atonement

published	November 5th 2002 by Vintage Canada
first published	2001
binding	Paperback
isbn	0676974562 (isbn13: 9780676974560)
ebook
pages	384
description	Ian McEwan's Booker Prize-nominated Atonement is his first novel since Amsterdam took home the prize in 1998. But while Amsterdam ...more [close] Ian McEwan's Booker Prize-nominated Atonement is his first novel since Amsterdam took home the prize in 1998. But while Amsterdam was a slim, sleek piece, Atonement is a more sturdy, more ambitious work, allowing McEwan more room to play, think, and experiment. We meet 13-year-old Briony Tallis in the summer of 1935, as she attempts to stage a production of her new drama "The Trials of Arabella" to welcome home her older, idolized brother Leon. But she soon discovers that her cousins, the glamorous Lola and the twin boys Jackson and Pierrot, aren't up to the task, and directorial ambitions are abandoned as more interesting prospects of preoccupation come onto the scene. The charlady's son, Robbie Turner, appears to be forcing Briony's sister Cecilia to strip in the fountain and sends her obscene letters; Leon has brought home a dim chocolate magnate keen for a war to promote his new "Army Ammo" chocolate bar; and upstairs, Briony's migraine-stricken mother Emily keeps tabs on the house from her bed. Soon, secrets emerge that change the lives of everyone present.... The interwar, upper-middle-class setting of the book's long, masterfully sustained opening section might recall Virginia Woolf or Henry Green, but as we move forward--eventually to the turn of the 21st century--the novel's central concerns emerge, and McEwan's voice becomes clear, even personal. For at heart, Atonement is about the pleasures, pains, and dangers of writing, and perhaps even more, about the challenge of controlling what readers make of your writing. McEwan shouldn't have any doubts about readers of Atonement: this is a thoughtful, provocative, and at times moving book that will have readers applauding. --Alan Stewart, Amazon.co.uk [close]
date added	05-14-07 edit book

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Arctic rated it:

(review of isbn 038572179X)

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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Annalisa rated it:

(review of isbn 038572179X)

08/19/08

bookshelves: book-club, chick-lit, favorite-books, movies

Read in March, 2008

recommends it for: book club

This is an excellent book-club selection because there are so many angles and perceptions to consider. Sometimes the end can make a book and that is certainly the case here where the story is left open for interpretation. This is a book that leaves you thinking and considering, making up your own conclusions--and strong enough characters to make you want to.

The first few chapters I did find my mind wandering through lengthy descriptions (I'll call it beautiful, poetic scenery), and yet those...more

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Martine rated it:

(review of isbn 038572179X)

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:

(review of isbn 038572179X)

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:

(review of isbn 038572179X)

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:

(review of isbn 038572179X)

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:

(review of isbn 038572179X)

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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Micheledbraun rated it:

(review of isbn 038572179X)

08/17/08

The novel is primarily about story writing. The protagonist first writes stories as a child, and her view of the world is affected by her understanding of the events around her as a novel as well as her difficulty in separating the reality of her life, actions and their consequences, from the fiction she writes.

The novel is constructed in three parts with an epilogue - the first part, comprising almost half of the book describes a family and their hired help in 1935. 13 year old Briony Tallis ...more The novel is primarily about story writing. The protagonist first writes stories as a child, and her view of the world is affected by her understanding of the events around her as a novel as well as her difficulty in separating the reality of her life, actions and their consequences, from the fiction she writes.

The novel is constructed in three parts with an epilogue - the first part, comprising almost half of the book describes a family and their hired help in 1935. 13 year old Briony Tallis witnesses an argument between her older sister, Cecilia, and their charlady's son, Robbie Turner, but she is far enough away that she only sees the action without hearing what they say. Her active imagination (she aspires to be a writer), imagines a scene in which Robbie threatens her sister and she interprets the rest of the events of the day in light of this supposition. But Briony is too young to understand adult motivations and she gets it all wrong.

Her older cousin Lola and two younger twin brothers Pierrot and Jackson, have come to stay with the family while their parents separate (their mother is in France with another man). She is enraptured by the scene, imagining it as a scene in a novel, something she has decided she will write because she is currently frustrated with playwriting (at least the directing and producing part). Robbie is not threatening her sister, he is in love with her and they've both just discovered it. During the evening, the twins, in frustration and homesickness, run away and a search party is sent out into the night to look for them. As everyone separates, Briony wanders for a while until she comes upon what she thinks is a bush, until it separates, revealing itself to be a man and a prone figure on the grass. The figure is Lola and she has been attacked. Briony, with her newly formed ideas about Robbie as a madman and her desire to protect her sister, names him as the attacker. The section ends with him taken away in a police car, and enough foreshadowing of Briony's actions and complicity in accusing him for the reader to clearly know he is sentenced for the 'crime'.

The second part describes Robbie's trek across France to Dunkirk as part of the retreat of May 1945 after he was offered the chance of commuting his sentence by working it off in the army. It describes the horrors of war, the camraderie, the numbness that he feels as he walks, despite a wound full of shrapnel across the landscape and how he hates Briony for what she has done and loves Cecilia, who has promised to wait for him and loves him. It ends with him dreaming of rejoining her (a feverish dream in a burnt out basement), on the beach awaiting evacuation the next day.

The third section describes Briony's decision to forego university and sign up as a nurse instead, her decision to recant her testimony and her confrontation with her sister and Robbie in her sister's flat. They tell her what she must to do recant, and she leaves them to pursue their own lives together. She decides she must write the story as well as part of her atonement. This final section is signed "BT 1999".

The fourth part, the epilogue, is Briony's reflection on the fiction she has written in which she reveals that she is dying but Lola and her husband Marshall (her actual attacker) are still alive, so she cannot publish the account, and, unlike parts of the third section, we find out that Robbie dies of septicemia that day and Cecilia in a bomb raid a few months later (a bomb raid at a Tube station that she wouldn't have been taking if she and Robbie had gotten together and moved to their cottage as the fiction that Briony created had them doing). Briony realizes in the end, that she will be dead before the novel can be safely published and her atonement will make no difference. (There are also discussions of whether the writer can atone, since the writer has the power of god in writing the story and one can never know what is true and what is not.)

Unlike everyone else in book club, I liked the book better than the movie....less

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Élizabeth rated it:

(review of isbn 038572179X)

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:

(review of isbn 038572179X)

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:

(review of isbn 038572179X)

01/23/08

bookshelves: fiction

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

I feel that perhaps I have