A review by immabehazzie
Atonement by Ian McEwan

4.0

Atonement is so well written. It drags on a bit which is slightly annoying but it’s still enjoyable. I saw the movie before I even knew there was a book and Ian McEwan somehow manages to portray the amazing aesthetic that we see in the movie with words in his book. The characters are written like actual people, they don’t feel fictional at all which adds to the tragedy of the story. I think there’s a simple lesson in this book - people make mistakes. Obviously not on purpose or to cause harm but just because they didn’t mean for something bad to happen doesn’t mean it won’t. All of the characters suffer from a lie that 13-year-old Briony said (that she believed at the time). It doesn’t matter that she was a kid or that she truly believed it - everyone is still paying for the damaged years later. I think maybe that’s what I love about this book. It’s not sugarcoated like a lot of books are. It’s honest and real.