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32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Intriguing plot, and rare entree into the mind of a writer., September 18, 2005
Though this book is only of average length, it has the feel of a big family saga, so completely does McEwan delve into the consciousness of his main characters as they attempt to cope with the long-term repercussions of a "crime" committed by a Briony Tallis, a naïve 13-year-old with a "controlling demon." Briony's "wish for a harmonious, organised world denie[s] her the reckless possibilities of wrongdoing," so it is doubly ironic that her attempt to "fix" what she sees as wrongdoing involving her sister and Robbie Turner, a childhood friend, becomes, in itself, a wrongdoing, one she feels compelled to deny and for which she will eventually attempt to atone.
Opening the novel in 1935, McEwan creates an intense, edgy, and almost claustrophobic mood. England is on the brink of war; Briony, a budding writer, is on the edge of adolescence; her newly graduated sister Cecilia is thinking of her future life; and Robbie is about to start medical school. The summer is unusually hot. Troubled young cousins have arrived because their parents are on the verge of divorce; Briony's mother is suffering from migraines; her father is "away," working for the government; her adored brother Leon and a friend have arrived from Cambridge; and Briony, an "almost only child," with a hypersensitive imagination, finds her world threatened.
Step by step, McEwan leads his characters to disaster, each individual action and misstep simple, explainable, and logical. The engaged reader sees numerous dramatic ironies and waits for everything to snap. When Briony finally commits her long-foreshadowed "crime," the results are cataclysmic, and the world, as they know it, ends for several characters.
Giving depth to his themes of truth, justice, honesty, guilt and innocence, and punishment and atonement, McEwan uses shifting points of view and an extended time frame. Part I is Briony's. In Part II, five years after the crime, Robbie, now a footsoldier retreating from the French countryside to Dunkirk, continues the same themes, seeing the crimes of war, not only between the combatants but against civilians and, at Dunkirk, by the Brits against each other. In Part III, Briony, atoning for her earlier crime by working as a student nurse, rather than studying to be a writer, brings the past and present together, tending the casualties of war. The ending takes place in 1999, at her 77th birthday party.
This is a totally absorbing, fully developed novel, the kind one always yearns for and so rarely finds. The characters, the atmosphere, the lush descriptions, the sensitively treated themes, the intriguing and unusual plot, and the rare entrée into the mind of a writer, both Briony and McEwan, give this novel a fascination few others achieve. It's hard to put this one down. Mary Whipple
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant descriptive writing by a master novelist, January 22, 2008
This novel is an astonishing achievement from one of Britain's leading modern day novelists. It contains three very individual pieces of descriptive writing. The first is about family tensions in an upper-middle class English family in 1935 - in particular the tensions between two sisters and with a handsome young man who is suitor to the elder. There is an undercurrent if not of menace certainly of unease and when the climax comes it is no surprise. Here passions, mendacity, jealousy, snobbery and ultimately violence bubble inexorably to the surface. The second piece describes what happens when the grievously hard done by young man from the first part gets caught up in the retreat to Dunkirk in 1940. Again the description is brilliant - harrowingly complete and at times horrifically graphic in its gory detail. The third part is a description of how the now adult younger sister copes not just with the aftermath of the tragedy of 1935 but also with her determined effort to atone, partly by training as a nurse in a military hospital. The strengths of "Atonement" are the gripping plot, brilliant writing and the fine portrayal of both the principal and the supporting characters.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant Evocation of Life-Changing Events, July 19, 2008
Atonement is not a quick read, nor should it be. The warps and wens of language into which Ian McEwan delves are to be savoured like a delicious meal. The premise is that Briony Tallis, an overly-imaginative 13-year-old thinks she sees something, and the tale she spins based on this changes several lives. The story is told from the viewpoint of Briony, her sister Cecilia and family friend Robbie Turner. The novel has the feel of "Rashomon" in that each perspective makes the book feel like a completely different story.
There are some segments that were difficult for me to read - mostly those dealing with Briony's work in a hospital following the evacuation of Dunkirk, but the realities of war should not be sugarcoated, much as we might like to hide our eyes from them.
More than anything, Atonement is a character study, examining the various ways we rationalize our actions, for good or bad, and how we, yes, "atone" for those actions, if we ever bother to try. This is the kind of writing that other authors should aspire to, and which few achieve. Very highly recommended.
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