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bbrassfield's review against another edition
5.0
I read this back when it was new, but this was before the coming of Goodreads. Reading Machines Like Me reminded me to mark this book as read and to comment that this novel is a masterpiece of modern literature. Don't hesitate to read. In the years since reading this, I have often pondered the idea in my head of how we write alternative versions of our lives and those that we come in contact with, to shield us from the painful realities of certain situations gone hopelessly sideways. Hopefully not as sideways as what happens in Atonement, but then this is what makes Atonement such a powerful novel. Is Atonement actually achieved?
berlebacher's review against another edition
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
marie_hermine's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
sarahsmelser's review against another edition
challenging
dark
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Devastating.... First book I've cried at in a long while. Took me until about halfway through th first section to really get into it, but so glad I did.
ihiggyz97's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
I adored this. The writing is so sophisticated. It will be a book I will have to reread - I’d like to go back over with a highlighter for all the words to add to my vocabulary. I think this is the quickest I’ve read a book all year. Very compelling, the use of language starkly original and impressive. I love a bit of British wartime 🫡🤕
spaceapple's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
hank_vega's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
mollylouise86's review against another edition
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
thaurisil's review against another edition
5.0
One summer day in 1935, Cecilia, in a scene of misunderstood sexual tension, strips off her clothes and jumps into a fountain in front of her family’s charlady’s intelligent son, Robbie. By the end of the day, Cecilia and Robbie realise that their irritation and tension are the symptoms of repressed love. However, the event is witnessed by Cecilia’s 13 year old sister Briony, who later walks in on Robbie and Cecilia making love in the library. Not understanding, she thinks Robbie is a maniac, and takes it upon herself to protect Cecilia. Later, when she sees her cousin Lola being raped by a man of Robbie’s height, hinted to be a visiting friend Paul Marshall, Briony is convinced that the man is Robbie. Her testimony sends Robbie to prison and dashes his dreams of being a doctor. Part two occurs years later, when Robbie, after several years in prison, is a soldier in the Second World War, retreating to Dunkirk and forcing himself to stay alive by the hope of seeing Cecilia again. Cecilia herself has renounced her family, but writes regularly to Robbie. Part three sees Briony as a trainee nurse, trying to atone of her crime by rejecting a place in Cambridge and serving under an authoritarian Sister. She attends the wedding of Lola and Marshall, then makes her first and only visit to Cecilia and finds Robbie with her. The pair refuse to forgive Briony, but instruct her on how to put things right, which includes writing a detailed explanation of events to Robbie. In the Epilogue, it is 1999, Briony is a 77 year old established writer about to lose her mind to vascular dementia. It is revealed that the book we have read is one that she has written and revised many times as a form of atonement, one that she can never publish while the Lord and Lady Marshall are alive. On the penultimate page, we find out that Cecilia and Robbie died in the war having never met each other, and that Briony had never visited Cecilia out of cowardliness.
Ian McEwan is a master at taking tense, emotionally complex situations and describing them in ways that strike a chord in the reader’s emotional memory. He enables us to picture these challenging situations simply by remembering how we ourselves have felt in similar situations, or believing that we do. How else could he have explained why Cecilia did the inexplicable by stripping off her clothes and jumping into the fountain in sheer irritation and anger, and made it seem believable? Or how else could he have explained what Briony was thinking when she pursued the trial against Robbie, persisting with her testimony despite not being absolutely sure that he had raped Lola? Briony saw a man who was Robbie’s height. She had been thinking of Robbie as a sexual maniac, she was scared of Robbie, and she had only an infantile understanding of sex and lust. So when she said she “saw” Robbie, she meant it honestly. His writing is nuanced and descriptive. It is lyrical, but not overly verbose. There are enough descriptions to capture emotions and colours, but not enough to bore the reader. And then, just when we think that we know his style of prose, he shows his skill by completely changing voices in the epilogue, convincingly writing from the perspective of a slightly sardonic elderly British lady who has seen the world and established a firm place in it.
Atonement is also a tribute to writing. From the start, you wonder if Briony’s journey through writing is possibly autobiographical for McEwan. He writes that the young Briony is unwilling to let people see her unfinished work because it exposes her to vulnerability. Then she has a revelation, and she transforms her writing from simple moralistic fairy tales and parables to works of psychological realism, where shades of thought and feeling are the highlight and plot need not exist. She then receives a letter from an editor convincing her of the importance of plot, and finally winds up as an established writer.
Then there’s the angle of this being a book within a book. With the letter from the editor comes suspicions of how much of the story is “true” within the narrative, and how much has been made up based on the editor’s suggestions. Then we find out that the happy ending that Briony gives is not true at all. And this makes us question what is true within the context of the novel. Or does it matter? Afterall, novels are not real, and yet they are. They are real if they connect with our emotions, if the readers live on in our thoughts and feelings, if they speak something about the real world we live in and our human experiences. Fiction is only as real as the reader allows them to be, as real as the author’s legacy exists.
As the book ends, we are left with the haunting feeling that Briony has never achieved her life’s goal. She is a successful writer, she gives a speech as a guest of honour at her own birthday party, but has she achieved the atonement that she has spent her whole life trying to grasp? Being a nurse exposed her to horrors but left her still guilty. Speaking to Cecilia and Robbie might have helped, but they died before she could. And finally, after rewriting her novel seven times, she is still unable to tell the truth and face up to her guilt. You can imagine Briony through the undescribed years of her life, sitting at her writing desk, seeing the scene over and over, imagining what Robbie went through in the war, and writing furiously in an attempt to wash herself of her guilt and shame, and being left each time with the emptiness of failure.
People question whether it is fair that the whole blame of Robbie’s unfair imprisonment and the lovers’ separation was placed on a child. But this misses the point – that the blame was placed on Briony by Briony herself. Nobody forced her into guilt, the guilt is her own construction. Yes, she was the unwary victim of being in a situation that any child would misconstrue, exacerbated by the age gap between Briony and Cecilia, negligent parents, and being at an age where she is traversing the gap between childhood and adulthood without guidance. She does do a terrible thing that makes her chilldhood self difficult to like, and yet the choice to portray herself as a criminal is all her own, as is the choice to write a detailed narrative to explain herself.
Ian McEwan is a master at taking tense, emotionally complex situations and describing them in ways that strike a chord in the reader’s emotional memory. He enables us to picture these challenging situations simply by remembering how we ourselves have felt in similar situations, or believing that we do. How else could he have explained why Cecilia did the inexplicable by stripping off her clothes and jumping into the fountain in sheer irritation and anger, and made it seem believable? Or how else could he have explained what Briony was thinking when she pursued the trial against Robbie, persisting with her testimony despite not being absolutely sure that he had raped Lola? Briony saw a man who was Robbie’s height. She had been thinking of Robbie as a sexual maniac, she was scared of Robbie, and she had only an infantile understanding of sex and lust. So when she said she “saw” Robbie, she meant it honestly. His writing is nuanced and descriptive. It is lyrical, but not overly verbose. There are enough descriptions to capture emotions and colours, but not enough to bore the reader. And then, just when we think that we know his style of prose, he shows his skill by completely changing voices in the epilogue, convincingly writing from the perspective of a slightly sardonic elderly British lady who has seen the world and established a firm place in it.
Atonement is also a tribute to writing. From the start, you wonder if Briony’s journey through writing is possibly autobiographical for McEwan. He writes that the young Briony is unwilling to let people see her unfinished work because it exposes her to vulnerability. Then she has a revelation, and she transforms her writing from simple moralistic fairy tales and parables to works of psychological realism, where shades of thought and feeling are the highlight and plot need not exist. She then receives a letter from an editor convincing her of the importance of plot, and finally winds up as an established writer.
Then there’s the angle of this being a book within a book. With the letter from the editor comes suspicions of how much of the story is “true” within the narrative, and how much has been made up based on the editor’s suggestions. Then we find out that the happy ending that Briony gives is not true at all. And this makes us question what is true within the context of the novel. Or does it matter? Afterall, novels are not real, and yet they are. They are real if they connect with our emotions, if the readers live on in our thoughts and feelings, if they speak something about the real world we live in and our human experiences. Fiction is only as real as the reader allows them to be, as real as the author’s legacy exists.
As the book ends, we are left with the haunting feeling that Briony has never achieved her life’s goal. She is a successful writer, she gives a speech as a guest of honour at her own birthday party, but has she achieved the atonement that she has spent her whole life trying to grasp? Being a nurse exposed her to horrors but left her still guilty. Speaking to Cecilia and Robbie might have helped, but they died before she could. And finally, after rewriting her novel seven times, she is still unable to tell the truth and face up to her guilt. You can imagine Briony through the undescribed years of her life, sitting at her writing desk, seeing the scene over and over, imagining what Robbie went through in the war, and writing furiously in an attempt to wash herself of her guilt and shame, and being left each time with the emptiness of failure.
People question whether it is fair that the whole blame of Robbie’s unfair imprisonment and the lovers’ separation was placed on a child. But this misses the point – that the blame was placed on Briony by Briony herself. Nobody forced her into guilt, the guilt is her own construction. Yes, she was the unwary victim of being in a situation that any child would misconstrue, exacerbated by the age gap between Briony and Cecilia, negligent parents, and being at an age where she is traversing the gap between childhood and adulthood without guidance. She does do a terrible thing that makes her chilldhood self difficult to like, and yet the choice to portray herself as a criminal is all her own, as is the choice to write a detailed narrative to explain herself.
lisasletters's review against another edition
3.0
I did not like the characters, have to mention that 13-year-old girls are more mature than Briony was. Overall it was okay