Atonement

Rating:
Summary: Overrated
Review: sure was

there are passages that are very affecting but i've recently read
much better and more powerful stuff (see anything by richard powers for example)

get it from the library

Rating:
Summary: The Truth Is Not Found On Angels' Wings
Review: The writer Chaim Potok once said that you should give a novel written by a respected writer 100 pages before stopping. After a laborious slow start-- I was tempted to abandon reading this book-- this dark novel suddenly became everything I have come to expect from McEwan-- I was so glad I heeded Mr. Potok's advice as I was gloriously rewarded for my efforts. ATONEMENT is the best and most ambitious of Mr. McEwan's novels, even better than his Booker Prize winner AMSTERDAM. The action covers a long period of time: from 1935 to 1999; the characters in this dark novel are unforgettable: Cecilia, Robbie, Briony. Although I finished this book weeks ago, I cannot get Briony out of my mind. Is she just a silly, selfish 13 year old girl when we meet her or the essence of evil? She commits an ugly, vicious deed that changes irrevocably the lives of both Robbie and her older sister Cecilia. While Briony as an adult may carry as many bedpans as she wants to and bind up the wounds of every British soldier who is sent to her hospital, she cannot undo the awful thing she has done or atone, try as she may, for her evil deed. ATONEMENT stands for a difficult truth: we are responsible for our actions. We sometimes cannot make amends for the harm that we do to these people closest to us.

Mr. McEwan deserves all the critical acclaim he has received for this fine but troubling novel. It's too bad he couldn't have shared the Booker Prize with Peter Carey for this book. Is anyone who has read her surprised that Ann Beattie loved this novel? I bet Joyce Carol Oates-- speaking of a writer who does not find the truth on angels' wings-- would be crazy about this book too.

This novel had the same profound impact on me as other novels I consider world class: SOPHIE'S CHOICE, BLINDNESS, DISGRACE, THE SOUND AND FURY, to name a few.

Rating:
Summary: The big british novel
Review: I had the same problem as a lot of readers of having trouble reading it slowly enough given that I didn't want to cheat myself of several evenings of enjoyment, but I wasn't successful in slowing down the pace. The fourth, contemporary section of the book was my favorite and where I started to reread the work, because what I like most about Ian McEwan's writing is its essay quality and insights into late 20th century culture, not to mention his ability to drive all this with a suspenseful plot and interesting characters. Here in the final 13 pp. we had the English country house taken over by English tourism, the taxi ride through today's London, the high-borne narrator confronting the intellectual immigrant class, the dominance of the WWII experience in contemporary British outlook. I've read all of Ian McEwan's novels and to me what distinguished this work is his rich description of landscape, especially that of the country estate, to develop the characterizes and suspense and his use of the dreary urban landscape to wind the story down in part 3. And all his piling on of genre writing so that anyone who has read just about any "classic" British novel (or seen some of the BBC programs such as Brideshead Revisited) will find some echoes in Atonement. The main weakness of this novel, to me, is that the central drama and love interest are not plausible. Usually, Ian McEwan's novels revolve around complex, interesting characters who must respond to a side character's unusual, dangerous obsession. These obsessions are usually so horrific that they probably almost never actually take place in the world, aside from in Ian McEwan's novels. Not so Atonement. Here, all of the characters are supposed to be quite healthy and the central tension is not dependent upon any freakish people or events. However, I found the moral sense of Atonement misguided and the response of the characters to one another, implausible. We are supposed to presume that the young narrator is guilty of a crime by misjudging what she sees, but I found her actions reasonable for a 13-year old. In a legal sense, however, she is not guilty at all, though one man is guilty of statuatory rape, and the many adults in the story are guilty of extreme gullibility because they can't tell who is guilty and innocent despite lots of circumstantial clues(The man falsely accused behaves in a way after the "crime" that few guilty people could pull off, whereas the perpetrator disappears). I also was not convinced by the assumption that a crude note read by two young women would be enough to inspire a great life-long passion. Despite these flaws, I think that Atonement is among Ian McEwan's greatest works (along with Enduring Love, and Black Dogs). Unfortunately, I expect that I now will have to wait another few years to read a novel that I will enjoy as much.

Rating:
Summary: No resonance
Review: Think E.M. Forster meets Kazuo Ishiguro meets Stephen Spender meets "Upstairs, Downstairs." We have class conflict, world war ending a whole way of life, tragic circumstance, and a young potentially brilliant life gone terribly awry because of secrets. We also have prose that reads at first like it's precise and necessary but ends up as the opposite. There's a huge amount of detail, and it's well-observed and written, but it feels...random, like the writer was trying to decide what to talk about and just wandered around a little until he settled down.

And it doesn't mesh. I kept thinking it was like two or three shorter pieces cut together -- "Saving Private Ryan" and "Brideshead Revisited" and "The English Patient" -- unrelated in mood or voice or theme, except for the era, like a movie that changes scriptwrites or directors a couple times during production, only they're good writers and directors, so although the movie as a whole isn't anything new, there are individual scenes that really work.

And then there's the lame metafictional ending. Why do so many writers write about writing? Why whack the reader over the head with the notion that he's reading something? It makes me feel like I'm being messed with -- which is acceptable if that's what I'm expecting, or if the radically altered expectations makes me see things in a different way. I couldn't figure out the point here. It's not always productive to guess why a writer writes what he does, but I did wonder if he ended it this way because he didn't really trust his work, didn't think what he'd done was enough, that it could be rescued and made meaningful with a tricky finish. Like those B-movies where you think it's over but then the monster bursts out of the grave, the surprise doesn't save it. I wanted to like this one: it should have been fine, it should have meant something, only it didn't.

Rating:
Summary: The ending broke the spell
Review: I found the ending destructive to the story. I wish that the final thoughts, questions, premise, etc. would have evolved within the readers minds without such blatant delineation.

Sorry, but the story wasn't as startling as the critics reviews (hype).

Rating:
Summary: Masterpiece of fictional history
Review: I have read all of McEwan's books and this most recent writing is definitely his best. It is a masterpiece of fictional history that captures the times and events depicted with economy and distinction. His depiction of war is without equal in depth and lanscape. It is a page turner but also one that requires backing up from time to time to savour the rich writing.

Rating:
Summary: Read the first 330 pages, then stop.
Review: I really would like to give this book 5 stars because most of it is brilliant. An incredible love story, an incredible war story, an amazing tale, perhaps, of the evil that we can all do even when we don't really intend to. Unfortunately, in part 4, the last 18 pages of the book, the snake of postmodernism slithers in and poisons the entire corpus.

Like other people here who have (wisely) refrained from going into the details of the plot, I won't explain what happens at the end; at least, not explicitly. But let me put it this way:
remember when you first saw a film or TV show in which it was
revealed that all that had happened was "just a dream." You thought: hey, that was pretty cool. And then, after you saw that same stupid plot device over and over, you wanted to chuck your TV out the window?

You'll definitely want to hurl the book across the room when you come to the end of Atonement, where McEwan doesn't trust himself to have a conventional ending. Or maybe he didn't want to have a happy ending (fine with me, by the way). Or here's another theory: Julian Barnes snuck into McEwan's study and replaced the real ending with his own twisted version! Ah ha, now we're on to something.

It's really a pity because in addition to a lot of beautiful writing and a great story, there's plenty to chew on in the first three (much longer) sections about the nature of fiction, its relationship to truth, and about fictional form, too. The final part cheapens all that has led up to it. For the 5-star version of this novel, read sections one through three and then resist (resist!) the strong pull you will feel to peak ahead. Unless you are a grad student who puts postmodern games ahead of, ahem, the truth of fiction, you'll thank me.

Rating:
Summary: Stunning
Review: "Atonement" is not just one story, but three wonderfully threaded parts that combine into a powerfully moving whole. The story is so rich and epic in it's mere 350 pages, I wanted it to just keep going. I knew nothing about the plot before I started and I think the less you know the better.McEwan has created a wonderful collection of characters whose actions will shock and provoke as you witness their folley. Brilliant as well is his descriptive prowess of not just the English countryside, but of the horrors of war.This is the best book I've read so far this year.

Rating:
Summary: a victory for fiction
Review: I can't add much more to what all the reviews below have already said - approach the book in a pristine state, don't want to give away any story developments, separate sections all well written in different styles. It's a hell of a book, with a terrific heartache at the end. That said, what impressed me most was how believably McEwan describes Briony's juvenile state of mind - every whim, every extraordinary turn of thought rendered so plausibly. And in the final revelation (although some of the book's surprises can be guessed at, the last is the best, and truly impressive), he reminds us of how juvenile we all, and not only Briony, remain as fiction lovers, however sophisticated we claim to have become: we want our heroes to be handsome, our maidens beautiful and tragic, and we need them to sail away happily together into the sunset. And that is what great fiction, and McEwan, does for us.

Rating:
Summary: "Stick With It" kinda book!
Review: The first part of this book, going to about page 175, takes a lot of patience and concentration to get through. That is not to say that it is an unenjoyable or difficult read, but there is a lot of descripition, as well as intense character developemnt. But once you get to know these characters, good luck shaking their minds from yours. I did not realize how captivated I was until I read the last sentnce, closed the book, sighed, and said to my wife, "I'm really sad." Not so much because of how the story ends but because it was finished. Read this simply to meet a handful of people you would probably otherwise never meet. This is a brilliantly written piece of fiction with characters that are sorely lacking in most modern fiction--characters completely fleshed out to honest, painful lengths!