atonement by ian mcewan

i am behind on
reviewing a few books i have read last year but since i will not be able to attend the book club on the 11th of this month, i thought i would blog atonement and share my part of the contribution.

jade suggested the atonement by ian mcewan last month saying we should read the book before the movie is out.

i read the book in one and a half days in the beginning of december last year. even my sister was surprised. however, i must mention that i truly have a terrible memory, one that has induced me to start my blog in the first place. i can hardly remember books i have read, movies i have watched, stuff i have written and names of places i have been to. i am the epitome of the absent-minded professor if i can call myself that. so bear with me if i don't touch on matters that i should have.

there are very few books, almost none that i dislike. i may not go ga ga about a book but i will almost never dislike it.

i say this because atonement felt a little distant with me. i mean frankly i thought ian mcewan was brilliant and i have only nice things to say about him but i watched the trailer of the movie, and i think (and hope) that joe wright would appeal to me more.

shortlisted for numerous awards, including the 2001 booker prize for fiction, and the whitbread book award for novel - 2001, it won the 2002 national book critics circle award for fiction.

the story in short, the catalyst, a 13-year old precocious briony tallis is an aspiring writer with an overgrown heightened imagination (possibly dangerous) whose one lie sets the destruction of life and love affair between her sister cecilia and robbie, the son of the tallis family servant. it also sets the basis for the whole book, and years later, wrecked by guilt of her mistake she is seen to seek atonement.

in part one of the book, mc ewan does a brilliant job portraying briony as arrogant yet naive, confident with a know-it-all attitude, yet insecure. we meet her at age thirteen first when she seemed all that, at 18 again when we see her regret her childhood insanity and at seventy seven when we know the truth and finally leave her behind. she witnesses the love attraction and action of her sister with robbie, mistaking it for an attack. based on her belief that robbie is a pervert, she declares injustice for him. robbie is sent to prison.

in part two. we witness letters between the lovers and their undying love for each other. mc ewan distresses us with the separation and the injustice. set in 1940, war comes to europe where robbie is freed from jail on the condition that he joins the british army in northern france. what keeps him going is not patriotism but his desire for freedom and an urge to return to cecilia, who stood by him throughout his trial and imprisonment.

we see part three as briony seeking atonement. she is eighteen, a nurse at london hospital and has understood fully the weight of her misdeeds. she is aware of her guilt but still hopes for forgiveness. she searches for cecilia, wanting to make things right. cecilia and robbie are unforgiving.

mc ewan leads us and plays us with all those emotions and we look forward to perhaps a good ending for the couple who missed out so much on their togetherness.

the epilogue is where i realise mc ewan's devilish brilliance. he makes briony reveal the sickening truth that all this time we have only been reading her story, her novel, the way she wilds it up in that head of hers, which is why despite there being a terrible betrayal, an unforgiving one, she is still able to justify it. in reality she never seeks forgiveness from her sister and robbie, instead, they die before that.

so the book is actually a novel within a novel, we don't know the difference between reality and her creations. one wonders, being such imperfect creatures, we have this inability to see we are wrong. and sometimes when we do see, we do not admit it, instead work around it hoping no one would notice.

this symphonic novel of love, separation and war, childhood, friendship and class, guilt, deceit and forgiveness is a masterpiece on every conceivable level, especially the attention to details that mcewan gives the scenes is masterful. it seemed like he was almost writing it for a film. his writing is consistent and the war scenes were much researched into, the horrors of war extremely well depicted and the sense of terror and pain is empathetically felt. his novel is haunting, well crafted and all the descriptive passages can be easily pictured. even though the ending was depressing, i think the book's subtle complexities were magnificently put together.

a masterpiece on literature and a thought provoking novel. read it.