About this title: ATONEMENT, which Ian McEwan has called his "Jane Austen novel," is divided into three sections, reaching from the first chapter, set in 1935, to a startling coda in the early 2000s. In between is wartime Europe and a group of nurses tending to wounded soldiers; this section also describes the aftermath of the battle of Dunkirk, in which McEwan's ...
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Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780099507383ISBN:0099507382
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Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780099507383ISBN:0099507382
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Publisher: Vintage
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780099507383ISBN:0099507382
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Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780099507383ISBN:0099507382
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Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780099507383ISBN:0099507382
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Publisher: Anchor Books
Date Published: 2001
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Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780099507383ISBN:0099507382
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Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780099507383ISBN:0099507382
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Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Jonathan Cape
Date Published: 2001
ISBN-13:9780224062527ISBN:0224062522
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Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780099507383ISBN:0099507382
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Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Jonathan Cape
Date Published: 2001
ISBN-13:9780224062527ISBN:0224062522
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Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780099507383ISBN:0099507382
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Description: Good. Ships from the UK. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Your purchase also supports literacy charities. read more
Description: Good. Ships from the UK. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Your purchase also supports literacy charities. read more
Description: Acceptable. Ships from the UK. Shows definite wear, and perhaps considerable marking on inside. Your purchase also supports literacy charities. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780099507383ISBN:0099507382
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Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Jonathan Cape Ltd
Date Published: 2001
ISBN-13:9780224062527ISBN:0224062522
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Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780099507383ISBN:0099507382
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"Sometimes when I write these reviews, especially when they're of novels with widespread popularity and critical acclaim, I start to feel like a real curmudgeon. Is there anything really wrong with Ian McEwan's "Atonement?" Is it not a compelling story well told? Is the writing not clear, succinct, and free of pretentiousness? Does McEwan not draw the reader into a well-imagined world and hold him there until the last page? The answer to all these questions is yes. Yet still, yet still...
Maybe it's all the acclaim that "Atonement" received when first published and the literary prizes it either won or was shortlisted for, or maybe it's the comparison I'm drawing - unfairly, to be sure - with some of the classic novels I've been reading lately, but I just don't see why McEwan's book has been held up as one of the great works of literary fiction of recent years. (Or maybe everything else from the last several years is that much worse?) My chief problem with "Atonement" is it just never feels fully real, like great novels do. I could never picture Briony, Cecilia, Robbie and the book's other characters existing beyond their words and actions on the page. They never become something more than characters in a novel - never become real living, breathing people, as is the case with truly great works of literature. The whole book just feels far too mannered, too neatly composed, too written.
Spoilers to follow here, so skip the next paragraph if you haven't yet read "Atonement" and plan to.
Does this maybe speak, though, to McEwan's genius? After all, in his nod to the art of metafiction, McEwan makes the novel not really his novel at all, but rather one written by his character Briony Tallis, so that all but the last section of the book, which is told first-person by Briony, becomes a novel within the novel. A defender of the book who accepts everything I've said up until this point might rightfully argue that the novel-within-the-novel's weaknesses speak to the who the character of Briony actually is, and to her shortcomings as a novelist. If that were McEwan's intention, it's kind of a brilliant move: a good novelist purposely writing in an average way because the character actually telling the story is herself an average novelist. OK, but even if I accept this argument - and even though I made the argument myself, I'm not sure it holds water - I still don't want to read an entire novel that's simply average, even if it's intended to be.
Spoilers over.
Getting back to my original point, though, why do I feel the urge to demand that every piece of literature - even one well-loved, and with critical regard - need be as brilliant as one by, say, Nabokov? (Though, to be fair, McEwan is asking for this comparison, as Nabokov mastered the metafiction toyed with in "Atonement" back when McEwan was just a wee lad.) Can't some literary novels just be an enjoyable read without achieving a place in the pantheon of great literature? Isn't there, alongside Nabokov and Bellow, a place for writers such as John Irving and Ian McEwan? (And is that too insulting to McEwan? Too flattering to Irving?) And, finally, have I become, as a reader, too much a curmudgeon?"
"The three stars - three and a half, actually - was more about my personal enjoyment, me who was a bit disturbed by and couldn't sympathize with some of the characters and their fates, not anything directly concerning McEwan's writing dexterity.
I have no problem with Ian McEwan's skillful mastery of the language he used to tell this story of love, crime, war and tragedy. In fact, I like his style in this book (his first ever I'd read), much more than I do some other contemporary writers I've come across. I admire his fluent, vivid descriptions of places, weather, atmosphere, the heatwave, emotions - although at times they make me a bit tired and think "Alright, I understand what you mean, no need to throw more than a fourth of the thesaurus at me anymore!"
The lovers of this novel - around whose tragic lives the story was spun - were too... not uncommon to me. Two childhood friends who grew older and grew apart as they found out that there were too many differences between them; differences that made them realise that they're bound to be eternal lovers. But probably that's exactly why they're needed to be so: because something came inbetween them, and ruined the fairy-tale like ending everyone likes to dream of.
You might have seen the girl, Cecilia Tallis, in other places, more than once: a 'modern' girl, whose love, education and work cut her off from her family. Her mother thought Cecilia had contemptuously put herself on airs just because she went to Cambridge to read books like Austen's and Dickens' that all could be found in their home library.
Her lover is Robbie Turner, called 'Robbie' in the parts of the novel that deal with his life in the Tallises' house and when he's with Cecilia, and the cold, distant 'Turner' in the narration when he's away in Northern France retreating from the Jerry. Robbie was the bright son of a gardener and a charlady serving the house of a self-made rich family, the Tallises. His mother's master, with his dream of equality, paid Robbie's tuition and even sent him to Cambridge along with his daughter. A good-natured lad, falling in love with the master's older daughter. A handsome guy who tried to act helpful, but became a victim of a girl's seemingly unshakable imagination. Robbie's so nice a guy that he didn't feel it right for Cecilia to estrange herself from her family just because of him.
The most unusual character - and we can safely say that she is the central character of the novel - is Briony, Cecilia's far younger sister, a dreamy kid with wild imaginations and a true, honest love towards the members of her family. The wild and the honest mixed to create what later Briony would, when she reflected on her early teen years, think as a crime, but at the time when it was done it was only an innocent act of a girl too imaginative for everyone's good: accusing Robbie for something terrible he hadn't done.
But wait. Cecilia, despite all her liberalism that sent her love-making with the charlady's son and living independently, was still a bit of the snob after all - blaming and hating another gardener's son without evidence just because of her blind faith that it was not Robbie. And Robbie failed to grab young Briony's true intention, assigning a jealous, adult love that only... well, only an adult is capable of. And didn't he, in some way, kick the ball for the first time anyway? My, how one thing leads to another.
Oh, yes, love is cruel, love blinds you, and you'll think that however the lovers will live happily ever after. Will they? Read this book to know for yourself; it is one of the book's merits that it can captivate the readers' attention long enough, making them wonder about what will happen next and how it all will end, and how unpredictable characters can turn out. And it is Briony that I relate with, that I sympathize with: Briony that grew up and tried to liberate herself from the strains she created herself, feeling the guilt of having plunged people's lives into misery."
"If you like love stories with happy endings then this is not the book for you.
The story revolves around Robbie and Cee, two childhood friends who realize on a hot summer afternoon that they have been in love with one another for awhile. Briony, Cee's bratty little sister will be a silent witness to their most private moments. And because she is young and doesn't understand what is going on, this will compell her to accuse Robbie of sexually assualting her cousin who is living with them.
While the ending is disaapointing and sad, it does beg the question. How long must one atone for their misdeed and causing so much misery in so many lives?"
"Not since the early literature of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce have I read such intriguing prose. Ian McEwan really is a contemporary master, whose novels will be read for a long time to come. Atonement, the story of a childhood 'crime' with lifelong repercussions, is thrilling, heartbreaking, and highly relatable. This is a novel for readers in search of more intellectual meat, but is not so heady as to put you off. I would recommend this novel to anyone in search of an absorbing, haunting story."
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