Atonement

Rating:
Summary: Atonement
Review: The first half of the book was the best literature I've read in some time. Ian McEwan gives great descriptions of the personalities of major characters and their motivations. The second half of the book was good, just not as fabulous as the first half. Ending was a little weak. Left a few loose ends. I was enthralled all the way through and highly recommend the book. Ian McEwan is sensational.

Rating:
Summary: Elegant prose and compelling plot
Review: Ian McEwan is a genius. After reading Attonement, I started his novel Enduring Love and found that to be equally fantastic. Attonement is my favorite but I want to read all his novels. The start is a little slow but once the crime has occurred I dare you to put it down!

Rating:
Summary: The Author leaves you breathless
Review: In a time when we are blessed with a wealth of gifted writers, even though we still mourn the passing of the likes of WG Sebald, it is still a wonder to encounter a work of the magnitude of Ian McEwan's current masterwork ATONEMENT. Aside from he fact that McEwan has been consistently placing his fine, terse novels such as AMSTERDAM and ENDURING LOVE before us, there is little to prepare us for the grandeur of his magnum opus ATONEMENT. We have grown to expect this author's mastery of the English language, his uncanny sense of timing in creating stories that push forward fresh tales with the speed of a locomotive while finding beauty everywhere in the nature that he sees like few others. But nothing has prepared us for this masterwork.

The story of ATONEMENT is well told by others commenting at this website. What makes this illuminating novel so momentous is the crux of a story at once seeming so simple but ending as an indelible landmark in contemporary writing. This is a contemplation of morality, of love, of the unspeakable disaster of war, of the indefatigable resources of the human soul, of the staggering implications of a lie from the lips of a child of what ever age, and of mortality, of love.

If the first chapters of this book feel slow, making the reader ask why are we detailing every move of what appears to be another languid, hot summer day in a 1935 English household, we are slowly discovering this is a well paced prelude to the brassy blast that WWII exploded throughout the world. A family gathering becomes a microcosm for exploring the thoughtless poisons that produce devastating wars. Once the tale begins to unravel there is no turning back on the series of events that continue to surprise and amaze us and maintain a tension so great that only the interludes of McEwan's matchless descriptions of nature provide breathing room.

The author creates characters so adroitly painted that they are destined to become enduring literary names to reference when describing archetypes like Stephen Daedelus, Holden Caulfield, etc. His ability to draw us into the war plains of Dunkirk, the hospitals of war-torn England, the mossy lawns of English gentry is matched only by his ingenious ability to go back and forth from character to character, from chapter to chapter, showing all the retracings of thoughts and deeds as seen by his various characters.

While reading this magical book I was tempted to remember phrases to use while reviewing, phrases that were such beautiful examples of how fine a wordsmith McEwan is, but that endeavor was quashed when I realized that such phrases and word pictures of drama and still lifes were on all 351 pages of this opus. To try to entice raders by such quotations would be robbing them of the joy of discovery when this book falls hopefully in the hands of everyone who loves literature, who needs nourishment of the sould, who cherishes fine writing. To say more would be unfair. Read with welcome.

Rating:
Summary: Slow starter, but worth the read
Review: This is a much hyped book that I was eagerly waiting for. I even pre-ordered it based on various TV accolades. Well, the first 50 pages were very difficult to plow through, but then it picked up and after setting it aside twice, I finished it.

It's no Jane Eyre, or even the fast moving Tom Clancy, but worth the money and the read.

Rating:
Summary: The less you know about it, the better
Review: Like other reviewers, I wish I hadn't read so many details about this book before beginning it! Even though it was heavy reading at some points, it was still easy to finish over a few days. Each character is so well developed, and the story so interesting, I couldn't wait to see what happened.

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Summary: Atonement is truly spectacular achievement.
Review: Atonement is chiefly about a child, a little girl named Briony Tallis, who is at the age where she recognizes that the way she views the world is different than how adults view the world, and is desperately engaged in trying to understand why this is the way the world works.

A precocious child, Briony actively considers her own sense of reality: "was everyone else really as alive as she was? For example, did her sister really matter to herself, was she as valuable to herself as Briony was? Was being Cecilia just as vivid an affair as being Briony? Did her sister also have a real self concealed behind a breaking wave, and did she spend time thinking about it, with a finger held up to her face?" If the answer is yes, Briony thinks, then "the world, the social world, was unbearably complicated, with two billion voices, and everyone's thoughts striving in equal importance and everyone's claim on life as intense, and everyone thinking they were unique, when no one was." But if the answer is no, she thinks, then Briony "was surrounded by machines, intelligent and pleasant enough on the outside, but lacking the bright and private inside feeling she had."

The novel opens as a house party is about to begin. Briony is about to discover that her sister Cecilia does indeed feel as "valuable to herself" as Briony does. Or, rather, Briony is about to ignore this truth, in a moment for which the rest of her life will be an atonement.

Staring out of the window, she sees Cecilia, her sister and Robbie, a young frioend of the family, standing by the large fountain. Suddenly, Cecilia, strips down to her underwear while Robbie watches her, and steps into the deep fountain to retrieve something. Cecilia emerges, puts her clothes back on, picks up a vase of flowers that had been hidden by the fountain, and walks into the house. Robbie also walks away. The scene stirs the little girl, who had once confessed her love to Robbie. She has the sense that she has witnessed some adult mystery, perhaps a scene of obscure...domination. Briony does not know what McEwan has told us, namely that Cecilia dipped into the fountain to retrieve a piece of the broken vase, and that Cecilia's provocative stripping had more to do with ...challenge than submission or fear.
Unfortunately, misunderstanding the context as a child will, Briony proceeds to provide a series of adults with a version of event that land Robbie in jail.

The events pretty much ruin Cecilia and Robbbie's rather idyllic lives. It is only later that Briony understands what it is she has wrought.

The book then shifts to the war. Robbie is fighting, having volunteered to avoid prison. Cecilia is a nurse. Dunkirk is underway. This section is by far the best in the book. McEwan is normal the most controlled and concise of writers-spare, often, to an extreme. This prose is the exact opposite of his norm. Rich, expansive and deep, it is amount the best writing I've read in many a year.

The book ends with Briony an old woman with yet more changes in perception to deliver. I know that's not precisely a very informative statement, but to say more is to seriously influence the reading experience.

This is, quite frankly, the best book I've read in years. It's a truly spectacular achievement.

Rating:
Summary: A stunning and compelling read
Review: I've said this before ..but I find after I have read some of the other "customer reviews" as well as editorial reviews for books I plan to review here that I really don't know what I can add... the only thing I can say about Atonement is that it is a magnificent and compelling (an over used word but so applicable here) read -- and I do wholeheartedly agree with reviewers who said NOT to read all the many reviews of Atonement since ( and I found this very much to be the case with this particular book) they give far too many details and glimpses of the storyline which I feel takes away from the pleasure and enjoyment of what is coming up -- it is like reading a review of a film and knowing what will take place when you see the film --how it will end, etc....it is very distracting and diverting in an unpleasnt way. -- As someone said, it is four separate stories..all related but written in a way that they could stand on their own.. Briony's hospital experiences reminded me somewhat of Pat Barker's trilogy of World War One horrors and a slim novel that I had read recently called The Officer's Ward which also detailed the horrors of war and its effect on the human condition and spirit....enough said ..read Atonement --it's wonderful!!!

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant in spots, some overall issues
Review: The first two parts of Atonement are brilliant.

Part One features an inside look at a somewhat benignly dysfunctional early 20th-Century upper-class British family. There are segments written from the point of view of virtually every family member, and McEwan manages to powerfully convey the lifestyle and attitudes of not just the Tallis family, but of a segment of English society that really resonated for me. With the exception of a couple of minor passages that are a bit overwraught, the writing is wonderfully efficient, with everything having a place and importance, but with an effective pacing that isn't hurried.

Part Two features the experiences of one of the main characters (Robbie) in France, 1940, during the Dunkirk evactuation. This experience is apparently based on the letters from actual participants, and it shows in a real authenticity that makes it hard to believe that the author really *wasn't* there. This section really is better than a lot of non-fiction writing on the war, and like the first section, really manages to capture a time, place, and a real person caught in it.

Part Three is where the novel starts to fray a bit at the edges. We get another wonderful descriptive bit with the main character, Briony, and her experience as a nurse in a wartime hospital. But, it also starts to reveal what I believe is the key weakness of the book, and that's in the characters. All the wonderful setup done in part one (and to a lesser degree part 2) starts to fail to pay off here, as the characters seem to have been cast by their experiences in the first part - their development seems to abrubtly stop there despite just entering the primes of their lives. There is a scene between Briony, Robbie, and Cecilia that feels especially contrived. As it turns out, perhaps this particular scene is *supposed* to feel contrived! But that leads us too...

The last part (only about 15 pages!) is the most intruiging and also, to me, the least successful. Because as it turns out, despite the quality of the writing in the first sections, Atonement is a gimmick book. There are significant signals as to the nature of the novel throughout the first 3 parts, but it's unlikely to be enough to reveal the truth to all but the most attentive of readers. I think most will clearly realize that it's a novel-within-a-novel (and McEwen does some really interesting things here, with the style of the different sections undergoing important changes as the novelist-within-the-novelist matures), but there is more, and it's that "more" that causes some problems in interpreting the book. As it turns out (trying here to be somewhat circumspect), the novel is not *about* Atonement, it *is* Atonement, and is really *about* the writer's craft. The details of this "surprise ending that makes you rethink the entire book" not only really didn't work for me, but actually caused me to devalue the novel as a whole and walk away somewhat unsatisfied. When Atonement was "about" the trauma of growing up as a girl in a repressive English household in a repressive society, or the struggle for survival in a war zone or sanity in a hospital treating the mass of war wounded, it had power for me. When it turned out to "just" be "about" an application of the writer's craft, it lost a great deal of its resonance (and it seemed to needlessly aggrandize the power of the writer, although I suppose this point is open to interpretation - perhaps this just reflects Briony's desparation). Anyway, there was just no emotional payoff on all of the really powerful events many of the characters experience, just a small intellectual one on the nature of writing, and not being a writer myself, all of a sudden the relevance of the book to me seemed to rapidly fade. Regardless of how good the first 300 pages were, it's the last few that leave the lasting impression.

This ending is somewhat unfortunate, because after a slightly slow start, the book is frequently very well-written and really did keep me engrossed through most of it. And the meta-nature of the novel within a novel is a very interesting premise that is well-executed until the very end.

So I do recommend this book for the brilliant work in the first two parts, and part of the third - they really are that good. And the novel-within-a-novel format is well-executed and interesting. It's just a shame that the payoff is an intellectual unravelling of threads and motivations and analysis of writing rather than somthing with real emotional power.

Rating:
Summary: Woefully Disappointing
Review: The first chapter of Ian McEwan's "Atonement" is wonderful; I would give IT 5 stars. It's lyrical and witty and a perfect character sketch of 13 year old Broiny as she plans a play in her brother's honor in 1935. This chapter could stand alone as a short story and you would feel wonderfully satisfied and impressed.

But if you move on to the following chapters in "Atonement" confusion, disappointment and frustration set it. I was so prepared to love this book based on the media hype and the wonderful first chapter...but by the time I got to page 70 and still nothing had happened and the run-on paragraphs were PAGES long full of of internal monologs and descriptions...I finally, reluctantly, sadly, had to close the book. This is not the masterpiece that was promised.

Rating:
Summary: There Are Few Books Like It
Review: Dear Readers of these Reviews, there are few books like Atonement. Complex yet easily understood , family emotions existing and trapped by lies and rising tensions in prewar England. Filled with twists and turns that surprise without being forced. War images; sexual awakening images; innocence, both of moral goodness and childhood lost. This is a novel to soak up slowly, and with pleasure.
It resembles the pacing of To Kill a Mockingbird, and the depth of character in the small press book, The Widow's Son. As with these two books, Atonement will sweep you away in thought and emotion and, in the end, make you reach the joy readers seek from their books.