Atonement by Ian McEwan

The famous and well-received novel Atonement is written by the recognized English author Ian McEwan. The book was published in 2001 and has since then received great acknowledgment from readers all around the world.
Atonement tells the story of three people’s lives and a happening that takes place in the 1930’s that changes everything. It’s a time constantly in alternation with a world war on its doorstep.
Briony Tallis is a very thoughtful child at the age of thirteen with love and fascination for stories and well-kept secrets. Her nine year older sister Cecilia is a much more pragmatic person with the sense for living in the moment. On a nice summer day in 1935 Briony witnesses an occurrence between Cecilia and the family friend Robbie Turner at the same age, both of them at the front of the garden fountain. What she sees and how she reacts to it will give serious consequences for all three of them in the future that comes. Soon a second world war will cause more trouble in their lives and Briony will painfully feel on her young body what responsibility and conscience are, a body that with the time becomes older and older, but still carries the weight of shame and bad conscience.
I loved and enjoyed reading the book Atonement very much and it was difficult to put it away when not reading it. I believe some of the reason why I liked the book so much was because of the writer, Ian McEwan’s, brilliant and wonderful way of writing; so deep, human, tender and wise. The author makes you feel you know the characters, and the time in which everything takes place is very interesting and entertaining in itself. I really liked the main characters; Briony, Robbie and Cecilia, all of them with beautiful personalities and with lives so strongly tied together.
The book has a combination of many genres; historical, romantic, crime, fiction and it is difficult to define the book with only one of the genres. The book is also a story of growing up and entering the adult world, not only the approval of becoming older but also the responsibility that lays in it and hides under the surface. Life is not a play with players that you can rule over and control, in the real world it has consequences and every human has its own life with their own dreams and needs.
The writer has devised the story so extremely well and with such an end that parts of the foregoing acts have to be seen with new eyes and understanding. There is not just one storyteller, the story is told by the main characters Briony, Robbie and Cecilia together and the reader get to know their deepest thoughts.
Some of “the riddle” with the book is to know what statements that are true and what are not. There is an all-knowing author as well, but he doesn’t reveal everything on his way and it secures the acts from above and the storyteller’s trustworthiness.The writer’s use of retrospectives, the travel in time, is effective and very good, and at the same time you get the story from different perspectives.
I believe it was a good and useful way to pass time to read Atonement, at least it was for me, because I felt like I got to learn three knew people to know; especially Briony and Robbie, and I felt like I got to experience another time and place with historical events. I learned a lot about life and how it suddenly can have its turns on you and that it sometimes can be very difficult to defend yourself against it to come. What I think was very interesting was how a person’s secrets, lies and personal needs can affect more than the liar/secrets keeper, but other people as well. Brionys way of thinking and acting becomes important to the reader to understand the whole story, and the author teaches us not to judge someone too early, not before we know the person and hers or his values in life.
I like the book as a whole and I wouldn’t think of taking away parts of it even if I could do so, it is perfect just the way it is, neither less nor more.
I would absolutely recommend the book, but it does not necessarily mean it will fit for everyone. The reason why I recommend it is because I first of all believe the book is heartbreaking and it deserves more people to read it, secondly because the author, Ian McEwan, has won many prizes for his literary work. The novel Atonement has even become a film and was to be seen in the cinemas in the autumn of 2007 (winter 2008 in Norway).

There is a human sorrow that has exited through all times; that you cannot take back the mistakes already done. A needed hope and profound wish for forgiveness or reconciliation can sometimes save a life.


May 2009 - Louise Totland