Atonement

by Ian McEwan

The truth instructed her eyes.

The wide featureless land denied all sense of progress.

What was surprising was the speed with which her relief that Robbie was alive was supplanted by her dread of confronting him. Now she had seen him walk across the room, the other possibility, that he could have been killed, seemed outlandish, against all the odds. It would have made no sense.

Now it was happening at last, and it was as if she wasn’t quite here. She was watching from far away and she was numb. But she knew his words would hurt her later.

Strange, that for all her guilt, she should feel the need to withstand him. It was that, or be annihilated.

how can a novelist achieve atonement when, with her absolute power of deciding outcomes, she is also God?