Atonement: A Novel

Overview

The novel opens on a sweltering summer day in 1935 at the Tallis family's mansion in the Surrey countryside. Thirteen-year-old Briony has written a play in honor of the visit of her adored older brother Leon; other guests include her three young cousins -- refugees from their parent's marital breakup -- Leon's friend Paul Marshall, the manufacturer of a chocolate bar called "Amo" that soldiers will be able to carry into war, and Robbie Turner, the son of the family charlady whose brilliantly successful college career has been funded by Mr. Tallis. Jack Tallis is absent from the gathering; he spends most of his time in London at the War Ministry and with his mistress. His wife Emily is a semi-invalid, nursing chronic migraine headaches. Their elder daughter Cecilia is also present; she has just graduated from Cambridge and is at home for the summer, restless and yearning for her life to really begin. Rehearsals for Briony's play aren't going well; her cousin Lola has stolen the starring role, the twin boys can't speak the lines properly, and Briony suddenly realizes that her destiny is to be a novelist, not a dramatist.

Editorial Reviews

This haunting novel, which just failed to win the Booker this year, is at once McEwan at his most closely observed and psychologically penetrating, and his most sweeping and expansive. It is in effect two, or even three, books in one, all masterfully crafted. The first part ushers us into a domestic crisis that becomes a crime story centered around an event that changes the lives of half a dozen people in an upper-middle-class country home on a hot English summer's day in 1935. Young Briony Tallis, a hyperimaginative 13-year-old who sees her older sister, Cecilia, mysteriously involved with their neighbor Robbie Turner, a fellow Cambridge student subsidized by the Tallis family, points a finger at Robbie when her young cousin is assaulted in the grounds that night; on her testimony alone, Robbie is jailed. The second part of the book moves forward five years to focus on Robbie, now freed and part of the British Army that was cornered and eventually evacuated by a fleet of small boats at Dunkirk during the early days of WWII. This is an astonishingly imagined fresco that bares the full anguish of what Britain in later years came to see as a kind of victory. In the third part, Briony becomes a nurse amid wonderfully observed scenes of London as the nation mobilizes. No, she doesn't have Robbie as a patient, but she begins to come to terms with what she has done and offers to make amends to him and Cecilia, now together as lovers. In an ironic epilogue that is yet another coup de the tre, McEwan offers Briony as an elderly novelist today, revisiting her past in fact and fancy and contributing a moving windup to the sustained flight of a deeply novelistic imagination. With each book McEwan ranges wider, and his powers have never been more fully in evidence than here. Author tour. (Mar. 19) Forecast: McEwan's work has been building a strong literary readership, and the brilliantly evoked prewar and wartime scenes here should extend that; expect strong results from handselling to the faithful. The cover photo of a stately English home nicely establishes the novel's atmosphere Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information. -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.

Author Information

Bio of Ian McEwan

Born in 1948, the son of a Scots sergeant-major, Ian McEwan's childhood was a typical army one of the time - moving from Aldershot to Singapore and then again to Tripoli so at the age of eleven he was sent away to Woolverstone Hall, a state-run boarding school. He describes himself as 'a very mediocre pupil' until he was seventeen, when he began to find English literature exciting. After graduating from Sussex University he went on to do an MA course in creative writing at East Anglia, under the direction of Malcolm Bradbury and Angus Wilson, and began writing short stories. His first short story, Homemade, was accepted by The New American Review and the money earned from its publication paid the way for a trip to Afghanistan. In 1972 he returned to England and taught English as a second language whilst writing. In 1975 his volume of short stories First Love, Last Rites was published to sensational critical acclaim. Al Alvarez hailed it as a 'brilliant debut by the most promising writer around' and Anthony Thwaite described the book as 'a brilliant performance... with an originality astonishing for a writer still in his twenties.' It won the Somerset Maugham Award and revitalised the short story form. In 1978, his second collection of stories In Between the Sheets, with the now familiar McEwan themes of adolescent sexual awakenings, the perverse and the macabre, shocked the English literary establishment. 'What is strange and subterranean about human nature interest me far more than writing fiction about people accumulating wealth or losing wealth.' In 1978, The Cement Garden, his first novel, was published to great acclaim - 'a near perfect novelist' (The Spectator). In 1979, his television play Solid Geometry made the headlines when the BBC banned it, ostensibly for a scene displaying a pickled penis in a jar...and Ian McEwan was established as 'a leading literary spokesman for his generation'. In 1980, the BBC production of The Imitation Game gained instant recognition - 'A Play for Today of rare distinction' (Clive James). In 1981, his second novel The Comfort of Strangers was published and again, hailed as the work of one of the most outstanding writers of the 20th century. 'McEwan has already created a style and a vision of his own...no-one can afford not to read him.' (John Fowles). The Comfort of Strangers was shortlisted for the 1981 Booker Prize. The Child in Time, his third novel, published in 1987, won the Whitbread Award for the best novel of that year. Phenomenally well received, it drew high praise from Craig Raine and Jeanette Winterson and John Carey said in the Sunday Times: 'If you want to be appalled, refreshed, exhilarated, enlivened - read it.' The Innocent, published in 1990, was an extraordinary achievement. He took a genre until then dominated by Deighton and le Carre - and completely reinvented it. 'It displays the immaculate artistry we have come to expect from one of Britain's most highly respected novelists,' Sunday Times. Black Dogs was published in 1993 and once again the plaudits followed; '...testament to one of recent fiction's most remarkable regeneration: McEwan's transformation from a purveyor of knowingly nasty tales to a novelist unsurpassed for his responsive, responsible humanity.' Peter Kemp, Sunday Times Enduring Love was published in September 1997 to huge critical and commercial success; 'Enduring Love is an excellent book, executed with all McEwan's customary panache, all his usual readability and screw-tightening.' Mail on Sunday. The film adaptation is released in November 2004. Atonement was published in 2002 and went on to be a huge bestseller.

Customer Reviews

• Great read!

  Posted January 29, 2008 by Candace Weiss, Calsbad, CA

  Atonement by Ian McEwan was a great read! I really enjoyed the different views of each main character. McEwan writes a great story. Most of the story is set during World War II. There is romance, intrigue and adventure in this great story. I recommend this book.

Additional Info

Imprint

Knopf Group

Filesize

602.16 KB

Number of Pages

368

eBook ISBN

9781400075553

Awards

• American Library Association Notable Books
• Book Sense Book of the Year
• Commonwealth Writers Prize
• Costa Book Awards
• Galaxy British Book Awards
• Listen Up Awards
• Los Angeles Times Book Prizes
• Man Booker Prize for Fiction
• National Book Critics Circle Awards
• New York Times Editors' Choice
• Publishers Weekly Best Books of the Year