Atonement

Atonement
by Ian McEwan

Atonement
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Book Summary Information

Author: Ian McEwan
Edition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2007-11-27
ISBN: 0307388840
Number of pages: 496
Publisher: Anchor

Book Reviews of Atonement

Book Review: Slow start, but gets better
Summary: 3 Stars

Atonement is the story of a young girl's lie and how that lie dramatically changes the lives of everyone around her.

I've been going back and forth with what rating to give this book. I've finally settled on three out of five stars. The book started off pretty slow for me, but it didn't stay that way long. I had a little trouble liking most of the characters. Honestly, the only character I truly felt for and liked was Robbie. That's not to say that the rest weren't well developed. They most certainly were. I just didn't like them. The author's description of the war scenes were amazing. I could picture everything vividly. As for the "surprise twist", I didn't find it much of a surprise, but it didn't hurt the story. Overall, a pretty good book. I just wish it had moved a little faster.

Summary of Atonement

On a summer day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses a moment's flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant. But Briony's incomplete grasp of adult motives and her precocious imagination bring about a crime that will change all their lives, a crime whose repercussions Atonement follows through the chaos and carnage of World War II and into the close of the twentieth century.
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

McEwan, Ian Books

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