Atonement

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Amazon.com Ian McEwan's Booker Prize-nominated Atonement is his first novel since Amsterdam took home the prize in 1998. But while Amsterdam was a slim, sleek piece, Atonement is a more sturdy, more ambitious work, allowing McEwan more room to play, think, and experiment. We meet 13-year-old Briony Tallis in the summer of 1935, as she attempts to stage a production of her new drama "The Trials of Arabella" to welcome home her older, idolized brother Leon. But she soon discovers that her cousins, the glamorous Lola and the twin boys Jackson and Pierrot, aren't up to the task, and directorial ambitions are abandoned as more interesting prospects of preoccupation come onto the scene. The charlady's son, Robbie Turner, appears to be forcing Briony's sister Cecilia to strip in the fountain and sends her obscene letters; Leon has brought home a dim chocolate magnate keen for a war to promote his new "Army Ammo" chocolate bar; and upstairs, Briony's migraine-stricken mother Emily keeps tabs on the house from her bed. Soon, secrets emerge that change the lives of everyone present.... The interwar, upper-middle-class setting of the book's long, masterfully sustained opening section might recall Virginia Woolf or Henry Green, but as we move forward--eventually to the turn of the 21st century--the novel's central concerns emerge, and McEwan's voice becomes clear, even personal. For at heart, Atonement is about the pleasures, pains, and dangers of writing, and perhaps even more, about the challenge of controlling what readers make of your writing. McEwan shouldn't have any doubts about readers of Atonement: this is a thoughtful, provocative, and at times moving book that will have readers applauding. --Alan Stewart, Amazon.co.uk --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Amazon.com Review:
Ian McEwan's Booker Prize-nominated Atonement is his first novel since Amsterdam took home the prize in 1998. But while Amsterdam was a slim, sleek piece, Atonement is a more sturdy, more ambitious work, allowing McEwan more room to play, think, and experiment. We meet 13-year-old Briony Tallis in the summer of 1935, as she attempts to stage a production of her new drama "The Trials of Arabella" to welcome home her older, idolized brother Leon. But she soon discovers that her cousins, the glamorous Lola and the twin boys Jackson and Pierrot, aren't up to the task, and directorial ambitions are abandoned as more interesting prospects of preoccupation come onto the scene. The charlady's son, Robbie Turner, appears to be forcing Briony's sister Cecilia to strip in the fountain and sends her obscene letters; Leon has brought home a dim chocolate magnate keen for a war to promote his new "Army Ammo" chocolate bar; and upstairs, Briony's migraine-stricken mother Emily keeps tabs on the house from her bed. Soon, secrets emerge that change the lives of everyone present.... The interwar, upper-middle-class setting of the book's long, masterfully sustained opening section might recall Virginia Woolf or Henry Green, but as we move forward--eventually to the turn of the 21st century--the novel's central concerns emerge, and McEwan's voice becomes clear, even personal. For at heart, Atonement is about the pleasures, pains, and dangers of writing, and perhaps even more, about the challenge of controlling what readers make of your writing. McEwan shouldn't have any doubts about readers of Atonement: this is a thoughtful, provocative, and at times moving book that will have readers applauding. --Alan Stewart, Amazon.co.uk

Features:

ISBN13: 9780307387158
Condition: NEW
Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Product details:

Item number (ASIN): 0307387151
Author: Ian McEwan
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
ISBN: 0307387151
Manufacturer: Anchor
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 368
Package Dimensions: 100 x 530 x 800 (hundredths-inches)
Publication Date: November 6, 2007
Publisher: Anchor
Release Date: November 6, 2007
Binding: Paperback

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Average Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars

Rating:

- A Deeply Meaningful Literary Masterpiece
I feel that I cannot do a review of Atonement justice, Ian McEwan's writing is so sublime that any articulation I can give it necessarily misrepresents this superb book. But I must press forward regardless. Atonement is quite nearly a perfect book to my tastes; tragic, cynical and ultimately profound and deeply meaningful few other literary masterpieces can match it in capturing me at every level. Ian's mastery of language comes through in every sentence and only Jane Austin and--perhaps controversially--G.K. Chesterton. It is crisp, varied and sophisticated without becoming overly verbose and is always in service of the story. But the accomplishment of style and composition is by no measure the sole attribute to be praised. Rather, it is the characters so vividly painted, unique but never so exceptional that I stopped believing or caring in them and the unfolding tragedy that sets in at the end of the first act that demands my emotional engagement. Fair warning, while I will not spoil any specifics, reading further will expose tone and generalities of the book. I think what sets Atonement apart from so many other books is that this is a story about; not quite altruistic, but certainly good natured people with mostly benevolent intentions making mistakes that have dire consequences for each other and the pursuit of Atonement is never fully attainable. We are asked to consider innocence, fancy, self-deception and truth from angles we are rarely forced to examine. As the story commences we loath Briony's actions while simultaneously sympathizing and admiring her imagination and integrity, just as we feel her sadness as she comes to terms with her crime. In the end, I believe that Atonement does what few other stories do, it does not opt for the ease of a happy ending, but neither does it leave us with bleak despair. This is not a story of forgiveness; a crime has been committed that cannot be forgotten and while Briony seeks, and finds a measure of atonement it is not cheap, nor is it complete. No, a fairy tale ending is not to be found, it is rather, torn away from us and in this it penetrated my cynicism affected me profoundly. While I would leave you with that I do want to add one final side note that should not be read if you are not already familiar with the story. Having seen the recent film I was afraid that knowing the end would make the book less evocative for me and I am quite happy to say that while the ending did not leave me stunned on my second experience it was no less meaningful. If you too have also only seen the film then I assure you reading the book will enrich your appreciation further.

Rating:

- O.K.
I thoroughly enjoyed the setting and time period of the characters in this book; however, I found the plot and conclusion to be predictable. The writing is beautiful but the book is really quite boring.

Rating:

- Who's Afraid of Ian McEwan?
Terrific novel. I have thoroughly enjoyed two previous works by McEwan: SATURDAY and ON CHESIL BEACH, along with numerous short stories that have appeared in The New Yorker magazine. ATONEMENT has been on the family shelf for a long time, and I had been looking forward to it. Imagine my surprise 120 pages into the novel, when I was running out of gas. Part I drones on in endless description and detail, something akin to an sleepy Masterpiece Theater piece on post-Edwardian England. Perceptions and innermost thoughts of the leading characters are unfolded through excruciating stream-of-consciousness style writing. I nearly gave up slogging through this lengthy setup for the central tragic plot. Suddenly, Part II commences on the road to a rescue of the British Expeditionary Force at the Dunkirk beaches, and the novel tears ahead at breakneck pace. One can barely put it down. In Part III, the atonement, protagonist Briony Tallis receives a lengthy letter critiquing her submission to a literary magazine's editorial staff of what amounts to McEwan's Part I. It is a masterstroke. Here McEwan brilliantly plays his own critic, within his own pages! He mocks his own style as too derivative of Virginia Woolf. "Your most sophisticated readers might be well up on the latest Bergsonian theories of consciousness, but I'm sure they retain a childlike desire to be told a story, to be held in suspense, to know what happens." Yes, precisely! The epilogue, Part IV, allows the writer to blur the storyline between fiction and reality, to continue the suspense, but also to let us know what happens. ATONEMENT is a showcase for McEwan's creative genius.

Rating:

- Divinely Human--The Best Book in this Century or the Last
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.

Rating:

- Don't waste your time
I gave this book a fair shot. I endured through the first chapters where it droned on, setting up the various characters and switching viewpoints back and forth. I enjoyed reading the next section where it seemed that things would finally work out for Robbie and Cecilia, only to be greatly disappointed in the last two pages of the book. This book is the story of Robbie and Cecilia. He was the son of Cecilia's family's cleaning lady. Robbie and Cecilia grew up together, went to college together, and returned home together. Robbie has hopes of going to medical school and Cecilia is trying to figure out what to do with her life. The two have a strange spat by the fountain at Cecilia's house, and we find that Cecilia's younger sister, Briony, the writer, was watching. Briony completely misinterprets what she sees. Robbie finally gets the courage to tell Cecilia that he's in love with her. He writes several drafts and finally seals one in an envelope to give to her. As he is walking to Cecilia's house for dinner, he realizes that he might receive a better response if Cecilia has a chance to read his letter before seeing him. He meets Briony on the bridge leading to her house and asks her to give the letter to her sister. As Briony runs off, he suddenly realizes he sealed the wrong draft in the envelope - one that's more vulgar than he intended. He realizes there is nothing he can do at this point, so he continues as planned. Cecilia reads the letter, which is no longer in the envelope, and realizes that Briony read it as well. Briony now thinks of Robbie as a monster that is going to attack her sister. Cecilia and Robbie later meet in the library to discuss the letter and their feelings for one another, only to end up making love in the dark corner of the library. Then Briony walks in, and her thoughts of Robbie are reinforced and she's sure he has just attacked her sister. Later at dinner, Cecilia and Briony's twin cousins decide to run away. Everyone rushes out to look for the twins, but it's a dark, moonless night. Briony later finds her cousin Lola, sister of the twins, in a secluded part of the estate. Lola tells Briony that she has just been attacked. Briony assumes, and convinces herself, that it was Robbie that raped her cousin. The authorities are called and Robbie is taken into custody, after rescuing the twins, where he then serves time for raping Lola. As a result of the conviction, he now cannot go to medical school and with the exception of Cecilia, her whole family has turned on Robbie. Years pass and we find that Cecilia is now working as a nurse and that Robbie's sentence was shortened in exchange for him joining the infantry. She has completely walked away from her family as a result of what they did to Robbie. She is waiting for him and he's trying to return to her. Eventually, Briony realizes she was wrong and goes to see her sister, but in the end, is confronted by Robbie. They tell her what to do in order to set things right. The book then jumps forward several years, and in my opinion goes completely downhill. Briony has just received devastating news from her doctor and we learn that it is her 70th birthday. The house she and Cecilia grew up in is now a hotel. Her family has arranged a party for her there, and a surprise. Some of the other family members have taken one of Briony's plays she wrote as a child and perform it at her party. She is pleased. STOP READING IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW THE END On the last two pages, Briony says that she made up the whole story of how Robbie and Cecilia end up together. They both died before they were ever able to get together. This is a terribly depressing book. From child rape, to a man wrongly accused and sentenced, to the couple that is supposed to overcome all of this dying, it is simply depressing. I read the entire book, but I wish I hadn't. I wish I had taken the advice I read a while back that said to subtract your age from 100. Then, give a book that many pages to catch your interest. If it hasn't by that point, stop reading. There are too many good books to waste your time reading. I wish I could get those hours of my life back that I wasted reading this depressing book.