Atonement: A Novel [Paperback]

Ian McEwan (Author)

Book Description

Release date: February 25, 2003

Ian McEwan s symphonic novel of love and war, childhood and class, guilt and forgiveness provides all the satisfaction of a brilliant narrative and the provocation we have come to expect from this master of English prose.

On a hot summer day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses a moment s flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant and Cecilia s childhood friend. But Briony s incomplete grasp of adult motives together with her precocious literary gifts brings about a crime that will change all their lives. As it follows that crime s repercussions through the chaos and carnage of World War II and into the close of the twentieth century, Atonement engages the reader on every conceivable level, with an ease and authority that mark it as a genuine masterpiece.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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 --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

This haunting novel, which just failed to win the Booker this year, is at once McEwan at his most closely observed and psychologically penetrating, and his most sweeping and expansive. It is in effect two, or even three, books in one, all masterfully crafted. The first part ushers us into a domestic crisis that becomes a crime story centered around an event that changes the lives of half a dozen people in an upper-middle-class country home on a hot English summer's day in 1935. Young Briony Tallis, a hyperimaginative 13-year-old who sees her older sister, Cecilia, mysteriously involved with their neighbor Robbie Turner, a fellow Cambridge student subsidized by the Tallis family, points a finger at Robbie when her young cousin is assaulted in the grounds that night; on her testimony alone, Robbie is jailed. The second part of the book moves forward five years to focus on Robbie, now freed and part of the British Army that was cornered and eventually evacuated by a fleet of small boats at Dunkirk during the early days of WWII. This is an astonishingly imagined fresco that bares the full anguish of what Britain in later years came to see as a kind of victory. In the third part, Briony becomes a nurse amid wonderfully observed scenes of London as the nation mobilizes. No, she doesn't have Robbie as a patient, but she begins to come to terms with what she has done and offers to make amends to him and Cecilia, now together as lovers. In an ironic epilogue that is yet another coup de the tre, McEwan offers Briony as an elderly novelist today, revisiting her past in fact and fancy and contributing a moving windup to the sustained flight of a deeply novelistic imagination. With each book McEwan ranges wider, and his powers have never been more fully in evidence than here. Author tour. (Mar. 19)Forecast: McEwan's work has been building a strong literary readership, and the brilliantly evoked prewar and wartime scenes here should extend that; expect strong results from handselling to the faithful. The cover photo of a stately English home nicely establishes the novel's atmosphere

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Anchor (February 25, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 038572179X
• ISBN-13: 978-0385721790
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.8 x 7.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (925 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,899 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Ian McEwan is a critically acclaimed author of short stories and novels for adults, as well as The Daydreamer, a children's novel illustrated by Anthony Browne. His first published work, a collection of short stories, First Love, Last Rites, won the Somerset Maugham Award. His other award-winning novels are The Child in Time, which won the 1987 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award, and Amsterdam, which won the 1998 Booker Prize.

Amazon Author Rankbeta 

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#61 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Literary Fiction

#78 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Literary

#61 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Literary Fiction

#78 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Literary

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

327 of 366 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Trials of a summer night April 11, 2003

By Charles Slovenski

Format:Paperback

This is an engaging story and so finely written that the reading is both effortless and seductive. After I had finished (that is, after drying my eyes and regaining my breath), I was amazed to realize how complex a plot it is considering how smoothly it is told. By far, it is the best book I have read in years.

The story starts on a summer day at a large country estate in pre-WWII England. For anyone who delights in the heady mix of intelligence, innocence and youthful imagination, the beginning is like eating rich chocolate: 13 year old Briony has written a play -- the references to Austen, Burney, and family performances within 18th century lore are abundant and perfect -- to be rehearsed and performed by her unwilling and displaced visiting cousins in order to celebrate her brother's return to home with his sophisticated friend. However, reheasals in the playroom for THE TRIALS OF ARABELLA (of course) do not run smoothly: the twins boys do not understand what is expected of them; there's tension between Briony and 15 year old Lola. During the hot summer afternoon, Briony looks out the window to see her older sister Cecilia and Robbie, the cleaning lady's son, having what looks like some kind of menacing (and intimate) interaction in the fountain. The rest of the day's events and mishaps play out without implication until nightfall when a real crime of a sexual nature occurs and Briony's overactive imagination and lack of sophistication lead her to make a accusation which results in genuine tragedy for everyone. Without revealing the entire plot and overwhelming descriptions of war and survival, Briny spends her life paying for this mistake. Near the end of her long life, and having enjoyed without enjoyment a successful writing career, Briony's birthday is celebrated by her relations. This party is held at the old country house, now a renovated hotel, where her grand nieces and nephews perform THE TRIALS OF ARABELLA, a deeply emotional and incomprehensible experience for all (the surviving twin boy, now an old man, breaks down completely, as will nearly every reader).

This book goes into my unofficial rank as one of the best reading experiences I've ever had. It tooks me days to shake the feeling that Briony was a part of my life. I was completely transported and I don't think there can be better praise than that.

433 of 490 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars If God were a novelist March 13, 2002

By Eileen Galen

Format:Hardcover

I picked up this good-looking book with no advance knowledge of its plot - just a liking for other works of its author - and I'm grateful for that, and won't give away the story here. I was grabbed by its first description, and held closely throughout. McEwan has created characters who are so fully realized that I felt as if I had known them for years. It's an amazing story, though not at all far-fetched. It's slyly easy to read - think "page-turner" - but it is about vitally important things. In addition considerable historic research went into it, and that's a delicious plus.

McEwan invites you into an English world that you will smell, hear, feel, and taste - and your mind and emotions will be fully engaged. The family has money and servants but this is nothing you've seen on television or the movies. The story is told with discipline and control, and from several points of view. The people are palpably real. It's a tightly organized and satisfying assemblage of the things that matter, among them family life, childhood, debt and obligation, loyalty, imagination, faith and hope, innocence and guilt, love, desire, varieties of destruction - and the urge to make a difference. Finally: war and peace. (In fact, you might be reminded of Tolstoy in more than a few ways.) In addition it's a fierce and moving meditation on the life of the mind and creativity. At the same time, McEwan's powers of description are such that all of your senses are never anything but fully engaged. English country life in the 1930's - a heat wave, and the fragrance of wildflowers, the feel of a silk dress that is sticking to skin, the thick dark of a moonless summer night - through the horrors of the Second World War (Dunkirk most dramatically and effectively) and beyond. It is either sheer brilliance, or a deeply humane urge, or maybe just a workmanlike sense, but McEwan takes full responsibility for each of his characters- and sees them through to the end.

Nearly every page has something unselfconsciously remarkable to think about - or to reconsider. I used my pencil throughout; there is so much that is wise or just plain awe-inspiring in this book. McEwan has accomplished something amazing. I'm telling friends to read the book first, reviews second. The story is so terrific, and so moving and important - and might unfold best for the reader who comes to it blissfully uninformed. It's not very often that I've felt transformed by a novel. Read it as soon as you can.

70 of 75 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Crime without punishment November 11, 2002

By Friederike Knabe VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

A number of reviews have summarized the story of the 'crime' of 13 year-old Briony and the resulting dramatic changes that occur in the lives of the key characters: in addition to the young girl, her older sister Cecilia, her cousin as well as the son of the housekeeper, Robbie. The first part of the book covers one hot summer day in rural England in 1935 where the tragedy unfolds. The atmosphere is masterfully evoked and the evolving drama sensitively depicted. To this reader the most successful facet of the chapter and the novel overall is the characterization of Briony. In many ways, this is Her story, seen from different angles and from different time perspectives. She is, as the late arrival to her parents, a typical mix of a spoilt and neglected child. She lives in her own fantasy world where the realities of her surroundings are mixed in with the wild imaginations of a romantic of her age. McEwan captures the capricious teenager very well indeed. He also paints an excellent portrait of the upper-middleclass family and its open and hidden frustrations and tensions. Cecilia is also well drawn as the returning fresh (women's) college graduate. She tends to replace the mother for Briony and a set of cousins, but at the same time she is uncertain of her own identity. This part of the book is the most engaging, it draws the characters well and builds up the tension up to the 'crime'.

The rest of the novel does not maintain the momentum created. The story picks up five years later with Robbie at the front in France after having spent the intervening years in prison for THE crime, which he did not commit. Briony, obviously in part as a result of her guilt for blaming Robbie rather than the real aggressor in a false testimony, has decided to train as a nurse in London. We also learn that her actions resulted in her sister refusing to communicate with her and the rest of the family.

One wonders why the very detailed description of the retreat from the front to Dunkirk with a wounded Robbie as the main character was necessary. Based on extensive research of historical documents, McEwan offers an excellent account of the dramas of that retreat, however, its significance for this particular story is not evident. The incidental facts one learns about the intervening years, the protagonists and their changed relationships do not justify the importance given to this chapter. The exception is the description of Briony's life as a nurse which is more to the point. An extensive duty period where she is suddenly confronted with the dramatic influx of seriously wounded soldiers leaves a deep impression. The learning curve that changes her from an innocent and irresponsible 18 year old to an adult during those hours is well drawn. Her actions following this experience, although somewhat unconvincing, are intended to demonstrate her resolve to confront her 'atonement'.

The novel ends with an epilogue set some 55 years later. It depicts Briony as a successful writer of a certain age. While preparing for a birthday party in her honour, she reflects not only on her life but also on the question of atonement. I agree with those reviewers who commented on the weakness of the ending of the novel. The concept of a story in a story and the author's privilege to change major aspects of the story line to give it more of 'happy ending', does not sound quite convincing. Atonement is not achieved by making the characters survive and live happily ever after. Briony, even at 77, remains the capricious little person that she was at 13. She still invents fantasies and refuses to take responsibility for her actions.