Atonement ....

Summary
Ian McEwan's tale of a woman trying to atone for a horrible act she committed as a young girl is spellbinding. His language is poetic and sticks in your mind after you put the book down. Intricately plotted but not overdone 'Atonement' is remarkably human. The characters are all well drawn and possess real emotions. That is a good thing not just for McEwan's accomplishment as a writer but because it is their emotions that drive the story and make it so compelling. Had they been even slightly off the whole story would have seemed false and lacking in heart. This is a great book, and most certainly worth reading for anyone who loves quality literature.

Breakdown
Atonement is chiefly about a child, a little girl named Briony Tallis, who is at the age where she recognizes that the way she views the world is different than how adults view the world, and is desperately engaged in trying to understand why this is the way the world works.

Many might complain of the slow beginning. The set up of the novel accounts for 1/3 of the book. For readers expecting white knuckle-inducing turns of plot, the first section will indeed seem tedious. However, McEwan's subtly overlapping narration of disparate characters is masterful, as it captures impressionistic moments distilled through different eyes. He effectively blurs what can reliably be deemed as 'fact', and slyly delves into the process of creating a story. This aspect is enhanced later as we discover that the first part is Briony's submitted novella based on her account of what happened that afternoon.

A precocious child, Briony actively considers her own sense of reality: "was everyone else really as alive as she was? For example, did her sister really matter to herself; was she as valuable to herself as Briony was? Was being Cecilia just as vivid an affair as being Briony? Did her sister also have a real self concealed behind a breaking wave, and did she spend time thinking about it, with a finger held up to her face?" If the answer is yes, Briony thinks, then "the world, the social world, was unbearably complicated, with two billion voices, and everyone's thoughts striving in equal importance and everyone's claim on life as intense, and everyone thinking they were unique, when no one was." But if the answer is no, she thinks, then Briony "was surrounded by machines, intelligent and pleasant enough on the outside, but lacking the bright and private inside feeling she had."

The novel opens, as a house party is about to begin. Briony is about to discover that her sister Cecilia does indeed feel as "valuable to herself" as Briony does. Or, rather, Briony is about to ignore this truth, in a moment for which the rest of her life will be an atonement.

Staring out of the window, she sees Cecilia, her sister and Robbie, a young friend of the family, standing by the large fountain. Suddenly, Cecilia, strips down to her underwear while Robbie watches her, and steps into the deep fountain to retrieve something. Cecilia emerges, puts her clothes back on, picks up a vase of flowers that had been hidden by the fountain, and walks into the house. Robbie also walks away. The scene stirs the little girl, who had once confessed her love to Robbie. She has the sense that she has witnessed some adult mystery, perhaps a scene of obscure...domination. Briony does not know what McEwan has told us, namely that Cecilia dipped into the fountain to retrieve a piece of the broken vase, and that Cecilia's provocative stripping had more to do with ...challenge than submission or fear.


Unfortunately, misunderstanding the context, as a child will, Briony proceeds to provide a series of adults with a version of event that land Robbie in jail.

The events pretty much ruin Cecilia and Robbie’s rather idyllic lives. It is only later that Briony understands what it is she has wrought.

The book then shifts to the war. Robbie is fighting, having volunteered to avoid prison. Cecilia is a nurse. Dunkirk is underway. This section is by far the best in the book. McEwan is normal the most controlled and concise of writers-spare, often, to an extreme. This prose is the exact opposite of his norm. Rich, expansive and deep, it is amount the best writing I've read in many a year.

It is absolutely one of the best and most vivid war writing I've read. It is mind-boggling how a writer born after the WWII could write with such devastating insight about a war he's never witnessed. The terror of the war, the pain that the soldiers endure are written with sober, but sublimely elegant prose.

The book ends with Briony an old woman with yet more changes in perception to deliver. I won't give the story away, but the story reaches an inevitable, moving conclusion, and the last three pages of the novel are the most heartbreakingly beautiful closing pages of a novel I've read in at least ten years. Not only does McEwan give us the conclusion to the story of the characters, but he also validates and rarefies the art of writing as a reason to live, to preserve what is singly important to all of us: love.

This is, quite frankly, the best book I've read in years. It's a truly spectacular achievement.

Conclusion

There are few books like Atonement. Complex yet easily understood, family emotions existing and trapped by lies and rising tensions in prewar England. Filled with twists and turns that surprise without being forced: war images; sexual awakening images; innocence, both of moral goodness and childhood lost. This is a novel to soak up slowly, and with pleasure.


It resembles the pacing of To Kill a Mockingbird, and the depth of character in the small press book, The Widow's Son. As with these two books, Atonement will sweep you away in thought and emotion and, in the end, make you reach the joy readers seek from their books.