Atonement

This is exceptionally good and has a sting in the tale that leaves you entirely uncertain of what to make of what you've just been reading. Starting in an idylic 1935 this is full of mixed messages and confusions about what is seen and what is the truth of that seeing. We see this through the eyes of Briony, the youngest of the three Tallis children. She is 13 in 1935 and just at that difficult juntcure between childish enthusiam and the adult world. She has written a play for her three cousins from the North to perform with her in celebration of her brother Leon's return home. What she sees over the course of the next day and how she badly misinterprets what she sees will mark the lives of the family for the rest of their lives. She show more observes interactions between her older sister Cecelia and the charlady's son, Robbie and is entirely out of her depth. She also completely puts the wrong impression on how her cousin Lola gets to be in a particular state. What she then thinks she knows has happened (putting 2 and 2 together and coming up with a bushel of potatoes) is not what happened, and yet once it is said there is no drawing back. There are estrangements and marriages formed this day that persist for much longer.
The main part of the book was excelllent, the sting in the tail takes palce in the epilogue. Here we discover that Briony has taken that talent for the inventive and become a novellist and what you have been reading is her novel of the events. And the way this is written makes you doubt a lot of what you've just read, particularly with respect to the relaitonship status of Cecelia and Robbie. Is Briony as unreliable now as she was then? Despite the passing of time? Has she made the relationship one way in the novel but did it end differently in real life? nd did she follow through on the novels seeming offer of retraction (and atonement) for the mistake that led to the rupture in family life? We're not to know, but that seed of doubt has been planted, most particularly by the seeming absence of certain people in the birthday party of the epilogue. It is really very well done, this undermining of everything that has been built up over the last 350 pages. I read this almost in one go, while travelling, and it was engrossing. show less

At the age of 13, aspiring writer Briony Tallis has a play in mind to present to friends and family when her cousins come from the north. When she sees something between her older sister Cecilia and Robbie Turner, the young man whom her father is putting through college and the son of their washerwoman, her story about what happened changes their lives forever.

This is the second time I read Atonement, a book I disliked the first time around and would never have picked up again if we had not chosen it for book group. Though it was eight years ago and I was not reviewing every book I read at the time, vivid images from the story stayed in my mind, and the anger and betrayal I felt at the end of the story stayed with me a long time show more afterwards. I picked it up again with reluctance. Because I knew the story, however, I could look at it with new eyes. I noticed a lot more what the author was doing playing with narrative and point of view, symmetry, and the idea that real life is so much more messy than what we read in books. His writing is exquisite, with an ear for language and description that took my breath away at times and had me reading slowly - less out of reluctance than having to follow the rhythm he set for the story. Having World War 2 as a setting is no accident, either, as it is a backdrop for the individual, human story of Briony and her unforgivable ignorance. What ignorance did people have in allowing Hitler as much freedom as he had in the years leading up to the war? And how did we rewrite the story to sound better, to make us less culpable? Does silence implicate someone as much as willful deceit? These are some of the very challenging human questions the story poses, and we are not given any easy answers. show less

Of course there is always something spellbinding and touching in a love that’s faithful enough it crosses boundaries of distance and surmounts the passing time. A love that endures, as one might say, is both a blessing and a curse for it doesn’t deter from any kind of struggle, however the affliction, and reunites with a soulful fervour. But when it’s weathered by insufferable theatrics it becomes almost a borderline melodramatic excess. Such is Atonement. Told in paragraphs much too beautiful it can be emotionally dismantling, it successfully distracts from its subtle mediocrity. For one, Atonement is almost irredeemable with its usage of rape as a cheap, underwhelming plot device. As if it is not disturbing enough that the show more victim and perpetrator reach the most appalling of conclusions, the others are too caught up in their own confusing snobbishness, selfishness, and tiring anguish to prevent it at all. What’s more surprising here is my utter indifference to Briony Tallis which near the end turned to sympathy then pity of some sort. I don’t believe she is completely and solely culpable. A child exposed to some kind of trauma can’t be fully held accountable for acting out of fear. Some of the characters’ decisions are absurd (looking at you, Cecilia Tallis) too. And without any relevant interactions to invest much on, Cecilia and Robbie’s love story gets diluted into that one lustful library encounter. And perhaps if some form of explanation to Briony was provided after, it’d have been entirely different. Nonetheless, the chapters about the second world war are the strongest in the novel as they capture, also mirror, a life-altering catastrophe which victimises everyone. Nobody goes out unscathed. A theme present throughout the book. Amidst some flaws and predictability, McEwan’s prose kept me tangled (and fairly satisfied) in its depressing mess.

“A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended.”

If there’s anything of genuine value here, it’s how we tend to forget that words can be both sharp and dull: they can alter a moment, injure those closest to us, and they become smoke when they have burnt a cellophane of emotions. That and it’s surely romantic to be made love to against a row of bookshelves (but mind the cunt-calling please). show less

ATONEMENT (2001) is my third Ian McEwen novel, and I will start by saying this was also the third time I started reading it, because I put it aside a couple of times because it seemed to move sooo slowly. And it did this time too, but I stuck with it and finally finished it. But it was something of a slog, even this time. McEwen has created a great cast of characters, especially in the sisters Briony and Cecelia Tallis and Robbie Turner. There is a barely requited love story (Cee and Robbie) set in 1935 England, cruelly cut short by either an outright lie or mistaken identity (Briony) which sends Robbie to prison for three years, until he is released for army service in the war against Germany. Cecelia cuts all ties with her family and show more becomes a nurse. Robbie becomes part of the disastrous rout of the British Army and its retreat to Dunkirk, which was, for me, the best part of the book. Then Briony becomes a nurse, treating the casualties of that rout. There is an attempted reconciliation with her sister. Post-war she becomes a successful novelist and ... Well, it's complicated, and even a bit confusing, even with its tacked-on "epilogue" written by Briony nearly sixty years later.

While I was often caught up in the beautiful writing of this complex tale of love and war, at other times I wished he'd just get ON with it. Get the plot going! That "slog" I mentioned. A good editor could probably have cut at least a hundred pages from this too-long narrative. That said, there is, I think, a memorable and very moving story here. I have not seen the film adaptation, but I suspect I may like it more than the novel, as it would certainly contain those necessary edits.

Good story. Too long. Recommended with those reservations.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER show less

In 1935, 13-year-old Briony is witness to a sexual assault, but thanks to a series of bad assumptions, her limited child's viewpoint, and a willingness to let herself express more certainty than was actually justified, she identifies the wrong man, only admitting her mistake to herself years later. The result is a novel about guilt, but also about human fallibility, the art of writing, and war.

I can't say it's my favorite of the McEwan novels I've read so far -- that might be Enduring Love, actually -- but it does remind me of a thought I've had about McEwan's writing before: that his characters are so realistically human that they make me realize, with a sense of startlement, just how fictional everyone else's are.

I have had this on my reading list ever since I heard Nancy Pearl in a radio interview raving about it. It fit this week’s genre choice for a class I’m taking, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to finally knock it off the list.
I had so much to say, but the last 10% of the book has undone me. Now I begin to understand why the publisher’s description seems so misleading. It’s hard to describe this book without giving away everything.
I went into it with the knowledge that the character Briony does something horrible, with long-lasting ramifications. I spent the first half of the book bracing for the Horrible Thing, which I expected to happen fairly early, since I assumed it would be the catalyst for everything else that show more happened in the plot. Instead, I was treated to exquisite description and a deep dive into the minds of Briony, Cecelia, Robbie, and Emily. I vacillated between admiring McEwan’s writing and impatience for the Horrible Thing to happen already so the story could get going.
At the 25% point, I thought to myself, “OK, here we go.”
At the halfway point, I thought, “Wow, here? OK, clearly this isn’t what I thought it would be.”
At the 75% point, I thought, “OK, still good, and I have thoughts,” and at the end, I thought, “Well, shit.”
McEwan masterfully portrayed how subjective our interpretations of others’ thoughts and motives are and how that skews our internal narratives of their stories and ours. I saw Briony’s horrible act as the embodiment of that idea. And then he turned everything on its head at the end and sent my mind spinning. To find out that the whole book is Briony’s voice, that it’s the reason for the title, but that the atonement comes too late for justice, to find that she fictionalized what brought me so much relief for Robbie and Cecilia, to find that she’s the one writing about flawed perceptions but the whole thing is her flawed perception...it utterly blew my mind and killed me.
This book really stretched me and made me think. The author is monumentally talented. It didn’t get a full 5 stars because sometimes it was such a describe-a-thon it wore me out. It’s still a fantastic book, and worth the time and effort. show less

First read: August 2016
Re-read: September 2016

What a difference a re-read can make. Only a few weeks ago I posted a one-star review of this book after getting to about 20%. I wrote that I couldn’t get into the story and I couldn’t connect to the characters. I don’t know why but I decided to try again with it from the beginning and it was like reading a different book. I read it in two days and loved it from the first page to the last.

There is so much to this novel I don’t even know where to begin with a review. Atonement is the story of the Tallis family, written in four distinct tales that are set years apart from each other.

Part one introduces us to the family in 1934; Emily is the matriarch, prone to migraines, ruling the show more household from her bedroom and embittered by unresolved childhood issues with her sister; Cecilia, the Cambridge student and oldest daughter; Leon, the urbane and kindly son; and Briony, thirteen years old, the youngest daughter. She is a frustrated playwright and thwarted actress, desperate to be taken seriously by the adults around her.

I love this passage describing Briony’s writing process; it sums up her character perfectly;
The long afternoons she spent browsing through dictionary and thesaurus made for constructions that were inept, but hauntingly so: the coins a villain concealed in his pocket were ‘esoteric’, a hoodlum caught stealing a car wept in ‘shameless auto-exculpation’, the heroine on her thoroughbred stallion made a ‘cursory’ journey through the night, the king’s furrowed brow was the ‘hieroglyph’ of his displeasure. Pg. 6

Then there are the extended family and acquaintances; the Quincey cousins; the manipulative fifteen-year-old Lola and her mischievous younger brothers Jackson and Perriot; Robbie Turner, the only son of the Tallis’s housekeeper and childhood friend of Leon and Cecilia; and Paul Marshall, a visiting friend of Leon’s with more than a passing interest in Lola.

The events of part one take up the first half of the novel but only span one day. I want to write a review with as few spoilers as possible, and so I won’t go into any detail regarding the events of that evening only to say that it was utterly riveting to read. McEwan gives us a balanced and astute portrayal of a child who is swept along in a drama that began inside her own mind and ended with very real consequences.

Parts two and three are written from the perspective of Robbie and Briony respectively, and they can be read almost as a mirror of each other; both enduring the hardships and heartbreak of the war, both physical and psychological.

The difference in the style and tone of writing is very obvious between the different parts of the story. Part one starts off slowly, building the characters and the little world of the Tallis family, before the shocking event that changes the future of the main characters. Parts two and three are fast paced and more straightforward in tone.

Part two is more brutal and throws us straight into the retreat at Dunkirk with Robbie. It is much more psychological; speculating on a soldier’s frame of mind, how numb and hardened the men have to be to survive every day in this nightmarish scenario where it is possible to gunned down or blown to bits by a bomb at every moment.

Some everyday principle of continuity, the humdrum element that told him where he was in his own story, faded from his use, abandoning him to a waking dream in which there were thoughts, but no sense of who was having them. No responsibility, no memory of the hours before, no idea of what he was about, where he was going, what his plan was. And no curiosity about these matters. Pg. 231

Part three is set just a year after part two and Briony is still struggling to cope with the guilt of the events that took place on that day in 1934. She represses that guilt with hard work as a trainee nurse while at the same time expressing it through her writing.

Finally, part four takes places in 1999 and brings us full circle back to the old Tallis family house. It was bittersweet to see how the characters have aged, what has happened in their lives and finally, to see Briony’s play The Trials of Arabella performed.

It is revealed at the end of part three that Briony is the author of Atonement, and the whole book is her apology to Robbie and Cecilia. This revelation makes the different parts so much more heart-breaking, especially as she reveals that parts two and three were from her own imagination…probably. Briony admits to blurring fact and fiction, hoping to write her own salvation, and her sister’s forgiveness into reality.

I utterly, completely fell in love with this book on the second read and am so ashamed by my initial one-star review! Now I can’t recommend it highly enough. show less