Atonement: A Novel

by Ian McEwan

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A symphonic novel of love and war, childhood and class, guilt and forgiveness that provides all the satisfaction of a brilliant narrative and the provocation we have come to expect from the acclaimed Booker Prize–winning, internationally bestselling author.

One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century

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.

• ISBN10: 038572179X
• ISBN13: 9780385721790
• Publish Date: 25 February 2003 (first published 17 September 2001)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Anchor Books
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 368
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780385721790

Reviews

[Bianca]

It wasn’t only wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding; above all, it was the failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you.

— Part love story, part examination of literature: of the beauty and dangers of storytelling as a way to escape reality. What a beautiful read! I loved it!

[celinenyx]

Atonement was one big pile of meh. The characters are bland, shallow, and boring. The plot moves with about the speed of a turtle pulling a truck. The writing is self-indulgent and convoluted. Somehow I actually quite liked the movie, but the novel counterpart was horrible. There's nothing in Atonement to keep me interested, to grab me or keep me reading. The last fifty pages were hell to get through. The worst about it is that the entire point, the crux, the climax of the book, happens in the last five pages. Where the movie made an impact, in the book the climax just fizzles and dies.

[Whitney @ First Impressions Reviews]

On an English country estate in the jittery, gilded era between the two great wars, two young people stand in the summer's heat, arguing by an ancient fountain. Cecilia is the daughter of the household, and Robbie is the cleaning woman's son, a brilliant boy whose Cambridge education has been benevolently financed by Cecilia's father. During their quarrel, the two manage to break a valuable porcelain vase, and in a fury largely engendered by her unacknowledged feelings for the young man, Cecilia strips off her clothes, leaps into the fountain and retrieves the fragments. It is a dazzling moment, full of beauty and ruin, lust and innocence, so highly charged that it's no wonder Cecilia's little sister, Briony, observing unseen from a window, feels a sense of menace. She concludes that Robbie has compelled her sister to do something shameful. This assumption, when combined with later events, brings disaster not simply to the two young people who are discovering themselves to be lovers, but to everyone else in the well-intentioned, prosperous family.

I saw the movie first with a group of friends and enjoyed it so much I checked it out at the library later that week. I was presently surprised how little they left out in the film. Atonement was a throughly enjoying book, it was a little slow at times but overall very good. The middle, where Robbie goes into the army I found to be rather tedious as it was mostly descriptive of his troop walking and sharing the occasional meal with fellow travelers. It's really amazing how one action can effect so many people's lives.