Atonement

Rating:
Summary: Ultimately disappointing
Review: A very well written book with interesting characters. The ending was a huge disappointment. The last chapters rushed through too much time trying to find an ending. Not as good as the hype.

Rating:
Summary: i wish there were a 3.85-star rating
Review: Like others, I was prepared to be disappointed by a book that had been so touted as a masterpiece. Not having read any of McEwan's other works, I find it impossible to judge whether Atonement is a personal best; but while it does fall short of masterpiece status (another user compared it to Lolita!?), it is extremely accomplished and literate. The book is divided into three parts: parts two and three are told from 2 separate characters' points of view, and frankly, they disappointed me. The bar was set very high by part one, which encompasses the minds of several of the characters, narrating their everyday observations and epiphanies in the Woolfian tradition. In fact, the section could almost be a parody of, say, To the Lighthouse--that novel's author is actually rather preciously referenced in part three--were it not for the fact that it is exquisitely well-written. The plot is tight and urgent (definitely a departure from Woolf); and the prose is gorgeous, luminous. While I wish that McEwan had continued in this vein for the rest of the book, rather than abandoning the stylized approach for a more conventional one, the progression of the plot and characters justifies a less crystalline prose. Too bad, though, that the author couldn't find a more arresting voice for his heroine's adulthood. Nonetheless, Atonement in its entirety is certainly better than other books being hailed as masterpieces these days (The Lovely Bones, The Corrections); and part one alone is more than worth the price of admission.

Rating:
Summary: Masterpiece Theater?
Review: You can almost see this on your local PBS station. The opening story is set on an estate in England in the years between the wars. Money is easy, people are happy, a little girl is growing up spoiled. I found my stomach turning over as i so eaily identified with this child and yet didn't like her. What a combination! Even though the book is divided up into three stories, the first story with the little girl sets the others in motion.

Then you hit the war and the book changes. It is a graphic, painful depiction of the war in France - most notably the waste of human lives and history. Think the first twenty minutes of Saving Private Ryan.

The third story goes back to London, into the hospital wards during the war. Back tot he little girl, grown up and trying to become a better person than a little girl. Trying to atone.

I thought the book was very good, very well written. Parts of it will stay with me always. This sounds like a school book report. Sorry!

Rating:
Summary: It's a mystery!
Review: McEwan is obviously a capable writer and constructs some fine sentences in this book. However, I found the characterisation bland and the story too drawn-out. He could have shaved off at least 50 pages....I haven't been less engaged since reading 'A Farewell to Arms'.

Rating:
Summary: Believe the hype!
Review: I bought Atonement for my dad last Father's Day, because it had been relentlessly recommended to me on this very website, and it seemed to have an interesting enough story. I actually avoided reading it myself, wary of the huge amount of hype that surrounded it (it's difficult for me to appreciate good, solid novels once they've been touted in the press as "masterpieces").

I picked it up last Sunday, after my step-mother told me that I reminded her of Briony. Having just finished it, I'm a little offended, and a little proud that my step-mother would see similarities between Briony and me. My overwhelming feeling, however, is complete and utter amazement. Atonement is the most graceful, carefully constructed and emotionally satisfying book that I've read since Lolita. McEwan writes so masterfully and elegantly about art's relationship to the world, managing to make his illustration somewhat subtle in what would seem like an obvious parallel to the book's plot. Atonement lives up to its hype, and deserved the Booker, much more so than Amsterdam (which is worth picking up, but certainly no Atonement).

Rating:
Summary: Hyped up, knocked out
Review: Wow, some people really like this book. I am sorry not to be one of them. I wanted to finish it and had the best of intentions to do so, but I just kept falling asleep. I wasn't all that interested in any of the characters, honestly, and didn't really care what happened to them.

I have to say I thought Amsterdam was much more engaging.

I regret spending all that money and buying the hardcover version of this book. Hopefully other people will get more enjoyment out of it than I did after I donate it to my local library.

Rating:
Summary: Great Book!!
Review: This is a great story that revolves around a family with very interesting characters. McEwan does a great job of developing the characters in his stories and quickly you feel like you know them thoroughly. I've also read Enduring Love by McEwan and plan to read his other books.

Rating:
Summary: AN ASTOUNDING ACHIEVEMENT
Review: It has been several months since I finished reading Ian McEwan's ATONEMENT and several weeks since I finished re-reading it. It actually took me this long to collect my thoughts about this astounding achievement. ATONEMENT is quite simply one of the most moving, beautifully written contemporary novels I have ever read. As opposed to the last McEwan novel I read, AMSTERDAM, which was a tour de force of black, comic word play, ATONEMENT is a novel of character in which true, vivid but bleak emotions are always in play.

The book is divided into three distinct sections: the first deals with a British family at their great home, much like E.M. Forster might have written; the second part which takes place several years later during World War 2 takes us to France and part three is in 1999 and we are returned to the family home at a birthday party for one of the three leading characters, a celebrated novelist, who, during her childhood committed a crime so cruel that she has spent her entire life looking for some sort of atonement.

The depiction of the horrors of war in the second part of this novel is the most shattering I've ever read mainly because of McEwan's varied and specific details dealing with the lives of several soldiers retreating after a major defeat. One of these soldiers has been wrongly imprisoned for the crime in part one. Every other character is new to the reader, but fully and beautifully developed. Every section, every single page is so filled with life, both good and bad, romantic and villainous, nostalgic and adventure-laden that one cannot help but read and be thrilled at McEwan's control and mastery.

This is absolutely a book to treasure. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Rating:
Summary: Best Book I've Read in 2002
Review: This book was a gift, and I had no idea what it was about before I starting reading it. By the end of the book, I was blown away--I had to take a long walk and think about it all. This a beautifully written book, and the story was amazing.

Rating:
Summary: Have you ever misunderstood something you saw in the past?
Review: The main characters in this story are: Jack and Emily Tallis, parents of Leon, Cecilia and Briony Tallis; Aunt (Emily's sister) Hermionne's children Lola, and twins Jackson and Pierrot; Robbie Turner, the cleaning lady's son whose education is subsidized by Jack Tallis; Marshall, the chocolate magnate friend Leon brings home for the break.

In the summer of 1935, 13-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses and misinterprets a scene that occurs before her between Cecilia and Robbie. From a second story window of the house, she sees Robbie standing in silence while Cecilia undresses and goes into a fountain. Later on, she opens a letter meant for Cecilia (with vulgar language used) and witnesses Robbie forcing Cecilia into a corner of the library. From these events, she judges Robbie to be a dangerous "maniac". During a search party for Jackson and Pierrot one night, Briony sees the form of person running away from an assaulted Lola. Naturally, she immediately suspects Robbie to be the culprit. Her testimony to the police and her family grew more certain with each telling, and pretty soon it was accepted fact that Robbie had committed the crime and should go to jail. He does. This was also around the time WWII was beginning, and the second portion of the book walks us through a few days in the life of Robbie as he tries to return home to England after being conscribed to fight in France. The third portion of the book takes us five years from that summer where Briony has had time to mature and realize that Robbie was, contrary to what she thought, passionately in love with Cecilia and that Lola's attacker was also someone else she knew. She knows she has done Robbie grave injustice and seeks to make amends with him and Cecilia (who has patiently awaited his return from war). The fourth and final part of the book occurs more than fifty years later (1999) and reveals to us the truth behind Briony's search for Atonement.

One can easily anticipate the twists and turns the author has laid out in the beginning of the book (Robbie grabbing the wrong letter, what Lola's scratch marks meant, Jack Tallis' constant absence from home). The final section of the book, however, contains a shocker in its last 2 pages. It was not the ending I was expecting. But it does leave the reader thinking Briony will write another even happier draft for her "atonement." With each version of the story as part of the penance for her sin.

The prose is wonderfully crafted with vivid descriptions of everything from the Tallis home to the British retreat at Dunkirk during the war. McEwan struts his literary prowess with his metaphors such as Emily's migraine as an all-consuming beast. Truly enjoyable.

On a more personal note, I found it refreshing how McEwan was able to describe how simple love was back then. How the foundation of an entire relationship could rest on an event as trivial as a bus stop kiss. Yet be powerful enough to last and sustain one person through the darkest and grimmest days of war. And how fierce loyalty to someone you love could drive dividing lines between a family. This is the type of writing that's severely deficient in current bestsellers.

Memorable lines:
* "I'll wait for you. Come back."
* "My reason for life. Not living, but life."
* "They had... while others sipped their cocktails on the terrace."
* "It is quite impossible these days to assume anything about people's educational level from the way they talk or dress or from their taste of music. Safest to treat everyone you meet as a distinguished individual."

LEAP rating (each out of 5):
============================
L (Language) - 4 (amazing descriptions that put you at the spot, and an ending you wouldn't expect)
E (Erotica) - 3 (without being explicit, McEwan can evoke highly convincing erotica)
A (Action) - 2.5 (mostly during the retreat to Dunkirk in the second part)
P (Plot) - 2 (the plot of the main story is very simple, Briony misunderstands an incident in the past which keeps two lovers apart)