Atonement by Ian McEwan Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Atonement
Book Review: Divinely Human--The Best Book in this Century or the Last
Summary: 5 Stars
Ian McEwan's novel ATONEMENT is so subtly constructed, so beautifully psychological, so gorgeously detailed and plotted and real, that it is hard to believe he didn't somehow fish the story from actual life through some sort of fantastic time-traveling legerdemain. The story is of guilt, passion, love, cowardice, redemption--and the occasional impossibility of forgiveness.
The setting: Summer 1935, the English countryside, a place vivid with sunlight and stone and the scents of "dried grasses and baked earth." Briony Tallis, a 13-year-old playwright living on her rich family's estate, hopes that her newly arrived cousins will act out a play--but when her efforts fail and she flees, disgruntled, to wait for an opportunity to make herself affect the world, she disrupts love in its inception. Her older sister Cecilia and the maid's son Robbie are falling in love against their will; Briony's jealousy, intrusions and misconceptions about adult interactions lead her to make a ruinous accusation, bringing about a disaster of moral conflict and calamity which mars all their lives throughout World War II and all the way to the year 1999, when a penitent Briony is dying.
McEwan's writing unfailingly caters to the senses: "a slanting tongue of light," "the leonine yellow of high summer" and "a flavor of green and silver" from the Tallis family's lake are just a few examples of his sensory eloquence. The hospital scenes with Briony as a nurse are particularly affecting. His characterization is so perfect that Briony seems simultaneously human and yet faintly psychopathic, exactly the sort of contrast a writer of McEwan's talent revels in. There are no possible criticisms I can levy here. This is the best novel I have ever read--world literature should be grateful.
Book Review: First class
Summary: 5 Stars
This is my first McEwan novel and it most certainly will not be my last. I'm glad the movie version got such rave reviews because I might not have read this book otherwise and that would have truly been a loss. McEwan is such a gifted author who is capable or rendering deep emotions in such a way that I felt almost as though I was living through the characters. This isn't a book packed with scenes of action; instead, it is an introspective and beautifully drawn character sketch that I found a pleasure to read. That said, it's not for everyone though those who enjoy lyrical novels will certainly enjoy this one.
The character that was most interesting to me was Briony. As a young girl, she is very self-centered and filled with ideas about her own importance and when others fails to notice her as she wants them to she strikes out in ways that are vindictive and have consequences that are much more far-reaching than she can imagine. I didn't find her very sympathetic at this age though I think that McEwan did a wonderful job of capturing the psychology that is sometimes manifest in girls of her age. While she doesn't fully grasp just how profoundly what she is doing will impact not only the lives of Cecilia and Robbie, but her own as well. Still, as Briony ages and comes to a full understanding of what she has done she becomes far more sympathetic. How many of us can say that we didn't do something stupid and spiteful in our youth that later came back to haunt us? As Briony matures she comes to understand just how harmful her actions were and she also reaches one of the most unpleasant understandings possible upon becoming an adult--that remorse, no matter how deep, can not reverse the sins of the past.
Perhaps my only slight disappointment with the book was with Cecilia. McEwan offers us a glimpse into her thoughts when she is still young and full of promise but we don't get a chance to witness how she thinks once life has given her many reasons to sink into bitterness. She is a character that has far more wisdom than others give her credit for possessing, though, and what must have seemed to her family like a deranged act of love is, in reality, an act of justice in the face of great injustice.
Perhaps the most moving and vivid scenes in the book are those in which the reader sees World War II through the eyes of Robbie. These passages in the book are so rich in detail and so chilling that I don't see how anyone could be unaffected by them. Robbie's tale is ultimately one of survival and that is one of the book's true tragedies, that a young man who once held so much promise is reduced to a struggle merely to make it from one day to the next. In many ways, the war is a metaphor for his internal struggle, in which the prospect of carrying on is so bleak that one must wonder why anyone would bother.
As rich as these three characters are, concentrating mostly on them only scratches a bit at the surface of this novel's subject. It is, more than anything else, a novel about the human condition in which character motives are explored. Sometimes their actions don't make any sense. Their crimes result in nothing or in the destruction of the lives of others. The reasons behind their actions are often obscure and, in the case of Lola, unthinkable. Now that I've had the pleasure of reading this novel, I can hardly wait to see if the movie version even comes close to doing justice to McEwan's wondrous prose.
Book Review: Good One
Summary: 4 Stars
This is not they type book I normally read, however, I enjoyed it. I found part one very slow. This was building up the characters and their history. This may just be the author's style. The second half of the book was more engaging. Overall, it is a great story.Book Review: Gorgeously Written : But Not For Everyone
Summary: 3 Stars
I read 'Atonement' upon first release, and with the gift of time, I can say that this is a story that grows upon you months after you've read it. Ian McEwan is a great writer, no doubt, and his overly emotional story here is a bit too melodramatic at times, but you cannot deny the power of his writing.
The central heroine here, Briony Tallis, is introduced to us as being a combination of all sorts of virtues and shortcomings. In his effort to present her as a likeable, everyday sort of heroine, I regret that McEwan reduced, at some point, his lead character to some sort of caricature. I don't know if other readers have had this problem, but I certainly did.
Also, did anyone else have an issue with the elaborate usage of imagery when describing places or the immediate environment? I loved it for the first forty pages, but after a point this became very, very tedious indeed, as it seemed the author was sacrificing readability in favor of his fascination for his own writing. Well, if I wrote this well, I would probably spend hours describing linen or the clouds bursting with acrimonious aqua, etc, but I think it got in the way of a credible reading experience, for me.
The lead review on Amazon for "Atonement" reads - "If God were a Novelist". I am very surprised at such glowing praise for this book. I was discussing this with a friend of mine and we both thought that if you took the glorious language away, the plot itself was very weak and uninteresting. Seriously, if you placed Danielle Steel about sixty years back, she would come up with stories like this. However, like all proper classics, "Atonement" now has the benefit of a major motion picture behind it, and perhaps all the glowing reviews are from people more swayed by Keira Knightley's ethereal beauty, rather than them having read the book.
I am glad I read this book before the movie version came out. I haven't seen the film, but would like to. I would like to see how they present the older Briony, in her 'writer' phase. For readers and followers of books that normally make various awards long-lists and short-lists, the writing here very closely reminded me of Alan Hollinghurts's "Line of Beauty" that was busy garnering praise a few years ago. The attention to detail and the obsession with plot specifics will remind you of that novel in more ways than one.
This book also reminds of "Possession" by AS Byatt, which was a gorgeously written book, but found very few takers due to its slow, languid pace. When they made it a film with Gwyneth Paltrow, book sales soared, but I am yet to find people who love that book on its' own merits. I certainly did.
"Atonement" may not be for you if you are not a fan of long-winded passages and attention to decription. This is by no means a straight forward book or story, though the tale it contains is actually quite generic. Approach it with a resolve to devote two or three solid days to relish it - read it slowly with a glass of wine - and you will reap its' riches.
Book Review: Great Book
Summary: 5 Stars
I really enjoyed this book alot. After seeing the movie, I am so glad I read the book. I would recommend it to anyone who is looking for a great love story.