Atonement

Rating:
Summary: Overworked and Overlong
Review: I expected much more from this book based on the glowing recommendations. Character development is a hopscotch of scenes with no logical connection, growth, or explanation when characters do an about face in perspective and feelings. Emotional shifts are unexplained. The first section of the book was removed and distant. The story finally captured my attention in the middle section. If it had not been the book selected by my book club, I would have abandoned it within the first 100 pages.

Rating:
Summary: Heavy handed and thin
Review: After ploughing through Atonement for a book group, I was very disappointed. The writing is heavy handed, the character development is virtually nonexistent, many of the key characters disappear after the "crime", and the plot development is thin. It would have made an interesting short story, but McEwan fills up page after page with irrelevant war experiences of two of the characters that have nothing to do with the plot of the book and stretches an interesting premise into an empty novel. Atonement for the main character, Briony, is irrelevant since the only two characters who can give her forgiveness, we find out in the last pages, are dead. Just as the story dwells endlessly inside of the head of immature, fantasy prone, histrionic Briony--her perceived atonement is just as fantastical. This book is much ado about nothing. I'm surprised McEwan got such good press. Perhaps it's because he is a Booker prize winner for a prior work.

Rating:
Summary: Refreshingly different novel
Review: It's not just the time period of this novel (the years just before and into WWII) that feels removed from today. There's something about the writing style itself in the first section that's not-quite-contemporary. It's a little more formal, a little more English, a little more innocent. It sets up a beautiful contrast to the total end to innocence that comes next, as personal lives are shattered against a backdrop of a world torn apart by war.

This is a book about a crime and its effect on the lives of all involved (no secrets given away there, as it says that much right on the dust jacket). Yet it's not a crime story. The details of the crime and its immediate effects are mercifully absent. I turned the page to the next section after this crime with real dread. What could come next but the excrutiating details of confrontation, interrogation, trial, and the horrors of punishment, none of which I could stand to read about?

That's where this novel is different. McEwan knows you've read that book a hundred times, so he doesn't bother to re-write it. Instead he picks up years down the road, with the trial and punishment already accomplished facts. The crime remains inescapable and binds everything together, but it's far from the only fact of life. After all, there's a war going on. McEwan brings all that together to create fully-realized characters with their own stories and real psychological depth--they are, as Briony says, "separate minds, as alive as [one's] own."

Oh no, you groan. A literary novel? A psychological novel? But I like books with plot and a gripping story!

Not to worry--McEwan manages to do it all. Part II, which focuses on soldiers in the war, is a particularly gripping bit of story.

I do have a few qualms. For a novel built around a misunderstanding, there are places where the characters are ridiculously over-insightful: "I think Briony saw this and thought that and felt this," they say--which happens to be exactly what all the previous pages just got through telling us Briony saw, thought, and felt. And much of the scene towards the end in Cecilia's flat feels canned. But the biggest issue for me is the final "epilogue" chapter. It's an awkward device that I could do without--what light it sheds on the rest of the novel has already been made clear by the end of the previous chapter anyway.

Still, none of these are qualms that you won't gladly overlook for the pleasure of reading this wonderful, rich novel.

Rating:
Summary: Untangling the tangled web?
Review: "Oh, what tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive" must certainly have been in McEwan's mind when he penned this sensitive and beautifully constructed novel. It moves so slowly at first that it seems almost like a 19th century tale. The language of the story is far more sumptuous than the modern reader expects and the intricacies of the personalities of the characters, and the relationships between them, are absorbing.

This is a truly unusual offering from a contemporary publisher -- a book to be relished, and thought about, and treasured. And read again.

Rating:
Summary: Smart, interesting, but maybe not his best work
Review: I loved each section of this book (there were three) but found the end a little too gimmicky for my taste. It didn't help that I guessed it. On the other hand, the writing is quite splendid, and at times very moving. He's really a fantastic writer, and I'll buy his next book and his next. If you wonder what I think his best is, it's "Enduring Love." From title to last word, it it absolutely perfection.

Rating:
Summary: A Novel with a Cause
Review: I have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, it is a classical novel, with a strong storyline, well-developed characters, fluid narration and sturdy plot. On the other hand, it does everything, especially in its last quarter, to shed all attributes of a regular novel and to transcend to the postmodern domain. Was it worth the effort?

In my opinion, no. Don't we all know that nothing in this world, at least from the ethical point of view, is certain? Don't we all know that memories often betray us? That a story, told by one person, may radically differ from the same story told by someone else? The twist of McEwan's novel is that there is, basically, just one person, one character, one creator of the whole world described there, whom we meet on the first pages as a 13-year-old girl. She's done something bad, almost unwittingly; she's bound to atone (what a strange word that is, back-formation from atonement, etymologically meaning "being at one" - presumably, with God and His eternal forgiveness) for her accidental crime as long as she breathes; what we get is the life story of this mission.

Briony the writer is trying to create a new and better universe. She is trying to undo the knot, to unfry the egg she had spilled on the pan by mistake. In the universe she is creating, she would be innocent, she would not be responsible for the demise of other people's lives. Is it possible to do so by writing?

Mildly postmodern in structure, "Atonement" is wildly traditional in its ethos. It does not matter in the least that instead of good causes, Briony is defending herself. It does not matter that her success is doubtful at best. It does not matter at all that by the end of the book, we get a glimpse of her brain shutting down. It does not matter that Briony herself is a fictional character. It is, at the end of the day, a novel attempting to change the world, even if this world is confined within a nutshell. This is a novel with an Idea. And a Cause.

This is not an evaluation, though. Literary merits of a book are, in the long run, independent of any ideas the author is trying to promote. (Unless they are patently stupid ideas, which indicates that the author is stupid, which in turn washes away, almost inevitably, any remaining traces of talent.) As a historical novel, "Atonement" succeeds. The 1935-country-manor scenes are especially vivid. But the reader is forced to read through several hundred pages - this is a rather long book indeed - without getting very much to think about in the end. Not very much new, anyway.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful, but . . . .
Review: Absolutely beautiful, but . . . This book is elegantly written. Unfortunately, most of us read books today for the story, or at least the pace of story development. Not a criticism but a fact of life in today's world in which the various forms of video entertainment make plowing through a book seem 'slow'. There is no reward here for the reader seeking a fast paced thriller. But if you chew on your prose and enjoy skillfully phrased and artistic prose, as I do, then you will love this work of art. Frankly, McEwan intimidates me at times with his mastery of the language. Unfortunately, his story will appeal to a limited readership. Frankly, if you are in the club, ain't it grand. To the rest, maybe you don't know what you are missing.

Rating:
Summary: The best of the best
Review: Does your heart miss a beat when you see a new book by Dan Koontz? Have You ever marvelled at the writing style of John Saul? If so... you will hate this book. You will find the first 150 pages unbearable, and you probably will not realize that there is actually a surprise ending (it is very subtle). I don't mean to be rude, but this novel is simply not for everyone. However, if you enjoy well written and plush details (Which reminds a little of Daisy Miller, and some of Henry James' works). I enjoyed this novel, even though I did find some of the reading a bit tedious (I do enjoy Stephen King ;o) ), but by the final page... I was completely won over. Excellent choice, not quite Dickens.. but still very well written.

Rating:
Summary: simply amazing
Review: I haven't loved a book like I loved this book in ages. I'll admit that it was slow-going for the first bit, but mainly because it demands a slow, careful reading. McEwan's characterizations are incredible and the layers that he weaves throughout this novel are truly incredible.
The way the first section weaves back and forth through time and the characters conciousness is amazing--the unfolding and deepening of the tragic scene had me rushing to read more. He also brings each person and scene vividly to life through his precise and mesmerizing use of language throughout the novel.
I can't recommend this book highly enough -- I finished it over a month ago and I still get literally mad at some of the characters and teary at the heartbreaking ending.

Rating:
Summary: A Stunning Work
Review: Atonement is simply a wonderful piece of fiction, one that starts off impressively and then continues, getting stronger, until the last page which quite frankly took my breath away. The novel begins as a quaint, well-told tale about a few days on an English country estate in the 1930s. Young Briony has written a play and is intent on staging it with her visiting cousins. She witnesses an interchange between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie, their housekeeper's son, her imagination gets the better of her and she tells a lie that essentially destroys several lives. After the lie is told, the novel jumps ahead several years, focussing on the lives of Cecilia, Robbie and ultimately Briony, as she tries to atone for her sin. The novel then jumps forward again, it is 1999 and Briony is an accomplished writer, still, however attempting to atone for what she has done. The closing passages of the novel are some of the most powerful I have read, ruminations on writing and the power, and the lack of power, of the written word. Atonement is a serious piece of fiction, not something to pick up if you are in search of something light. It may take a little patience to get into. The first part of the novel can be a little slow (although I thought it was wonderful, something to be savored), but along the way it gains momentum and becomes utterly riveting and powerful. If you are at all curious about Atonement, by all means pick it up. It is a wonderful, powerful work, a rare novel.