Atonement

by Ian McEwan

How guilt refined the methods of self-torture, threading the beads of detail into an eternal loop, a rosary to be fingered for a lifetime.

Some readers have written to me to describe Briony as thoroughly wicked and detestable. But look, she's only 13 when she commits what she later calls her crime. The power of self-persuasion has been much researched, and we all know it in ourselves. Her imagination has distorted her judgement. I devote many pages to that conversational dance as Briony tells her family and the police that she 'saw' Robbie in the dark running from the scene of the assault on Lola. Briony is being - perhaps unconsciously - encouraged to name him. She feels she cannot go back on her story, and she is being gently persuaded not to back away. When she smothers her doubts and doesn't alter her story, she earns quiet approval. Then her guilt torments her for decades. She writes many drafts of the story. The reader has read the last. In the postscript, she is an old woman, a famous writer, ill and dying - and still tormented as she makes her confession. She has lived the 'examined life' and attempted to atone.