Rating: 
Summary: Starts slowly.......and quickly slows down
Review: Terrible book because it create expectations of "atonement" and then gets caught up in its own underware. Asking if the following sentence is "true" -- "This sentence is not true." is comprable to the theme you are to discover and contemplate in this book. Worse, the slow development is painful.The only positive is that the book is an accurate depiction of the mean spirited nature of a dying British class system.
Rating: 
Summary: A Metafictional Memoir
Review: At the conclusion of the narrative proper, the initials B.T. identify the novel's protagonist, Briony Tallis, as its author. Some 59 years after the events she has described, she declares that the version before us is the eighth and final one, differing from all of its predecessors which were "pitiless." Yet this one too must remain unpublished (sic!) because of potential legal actions which might be brought against the author by some of the persons she has portrayed. Thus ends a novel which is as much about the creative process in general and the motivation for the shape of this particular work as it is about the actual particulars recalled.
Thirteen years old at the beginning of her account in l935, Briony already aspires to being a writer. To date, her writing have been childish fairy tales. Her witness to the developing relationship between her older sister, Cecelia, and Robbie Turner, the son of the family's housekeeper, brings her to the realization that human events offer a better foundation for writing than does fantasy. She might impartially describe her experiences and so be "delivered from the cumbersome struggle between good and bad, heroes and villains." (p. 38)
Briony's first attempt at such writing "Two Figures by a Fountain," completed in l940, describes an awkward encounter between Cecelia and Robbie as recorded from their viewpoints as well as the author's. Although it is rejected by the publisher to whom she has submitted it, the editor's comments are instructive with respect to the further evolution of her memoir. While praising Briony for her ability to capture the mood of the moment from diverse perspectives, he asserts that "such writing can become precious when there is no sense of forward movement. Development is required." (p. 295) Briony herself has recognized the necessity for such a progression: "She had to discover the stories, not just the subjects, but a way of unfolding them." (p. 150)
Events appear to provide the impetus for that development and, in the versions of her manuscript dating after 1940, she created a more complex narrative. Central to it is her adolescent failure to comprehend the intensity of Cecelia and Robbie's passion. She is distraught by the obscene content of a note he has requested her to carry to Cecelia and when she happens upon the two of them engaged in sex, Briony is confirmed in her conviction that Robbie is a "maniac." It is her naive misapprehension which will lead to Robbie's subsequent arrest when she wrongly identifies him as the man who has assaulted one of her female cousins.
Presumably, in the years intervening between the rejection of the nouvella and the completion of the final draft, she has had ample opportunity to reflect upon the injustice of her action (which resulted in Robbie's imprisonment prior to his being released for military service). Left unspecified is the nature of the "pitiless" content of these prior drafts and the degree of remorse she may have expressed in them. From the epilogue's ambiguous conclusion, we realize that Briony has manipulated her manuscript to achieve certain effects and indeed, we are left to wonder if the entire narrative has been influenced by that early editor's advice to create a sense of forward movement.
Rating:
Summary: Agonizing
Review: I couldn't wait for this book to end. I had heard that it started off slowly but eventually picked up. That never happened.
Rating: 
Summary: classic mcewan
Review: the book starts out slowly but at the end, the reader is left breathless and with a burning desire to read the whole book again to try to see the clues that lead up to the unbelievable ending. Atonement reminded me of Amsterdam in this regard.
Rating:
Summary: A compelling read, well worth it.
Review: Atonement is a delicious tale of the mind of a young girl in the 1930's. Through her window, her older sister Cecilia, and family friend Robbie are standing by the garden fountain until Cecila strips of her clothes and disappears in. What this young girl sees, and the incidents that follow, make for a compelling read that made me do little else until I had devoured every last word. A delightfully intruiging tale that takes you back to the era of flawless manners where a lady never eats whilst standing and men always where coats to dinner. Proof perfect that life, is not all that it seems.
Rating:
Summary: An instant classic(with all of the vices pertaining thereto)
Review: The first thing that should be said about this novel is that anyone who reads it from a position of being able to compare it with the work of similar writers from the past thirty years or so will recognize it as a book that will clearly be discussed well into the future - fifty, or possibly even a hundred years - as representing a clear reflection the thoughts and attitudes of our own time. McEwan balances close psychological description with (dare one say it?) post-modern detachment without ever becoming as ponderous as a Murdoch or as gimmicky as a Barth. The main characters - especially Briony Tallis - are fascinating and fully realized human individuals, and the novel's clever and disorienting shifts of tone and perspective are masterful and never gratuitous or self-congratulatory. That having been said, there's a certain studiedness to it all, and the ending, while very striking and fascinatingly ambiguous, also seems perhaps a little facile in its cleverness, in a way that reminds one of the 'twist' endings of M. Night Shyamalan and David Fincher movies. One worries that this manner of storytelling will come to seem awfully used-up over the next twenty years or so. Still, in the meantime, this novel is simply not to be missed. I read it obsessively over the course of two days and it was only after much careful reflection that its minor shortcomings became apparent to me. How many contemporary authors write works that are even worth thinking about this much?
Rating: 
Summary: Not For Everyone
Review: I wish I had read the Amazon.com reviews before I started the book because I then could have calibrated my expectations better. I found Atonement to be long on theme (excellent) but short on flow. Ian McEwan is an accomplished writer but like so many others I found his book painfully slow. In truth, it may not have been but very often I had to mentally fight to stay with it. That may have been because I thought many sections were so uninteresting that I momentarily stopped caring about where the story was headed. I also found the book's characters lacking any appeal. Briony was an intriguing but very unsympathetic central character i.e. she just wasn't someone I could care about. Intellectually I liked the book's powerful theme of an individual's guilt and struggle for redemption. However, I had to work to get there. If you don't mind expending a little effort Atonement may strike the right chord in you. For me it was an interesting but not a very enjoyable read.
Rating:
Summary: Atonement
Review: Sorry, this was one of the slowest books I have ever read. I couldn't wait to finish it, which took forever.
Rating:
Summary: Insight into the mind of a jealous girl...
Review: I enjoyed Atonement. I didn't know what to expect when I purchased it, but what I got was worth my money. The basic premise is that of a hundred made-for-tv movies: Jealous younger sister makes false criminal accusations against older sister's lover. What makes Atonement a "save" is that it follows all of the different parties involved instead of sticking on one lead character. We learn what happens to a man who's been falsely accused of rape, and of a girl who grows up holding her terrible secret close to her heart. I ran through this book in 2 days while out on the deck but you have to get into it so don't give up--it has a slow start that will reward you with a fairly rich story if you'll stick with it.
Rating:
Summary: ONE VULGAR FOUR LETTER WORD DEVASTATES LIVES - WOW!
Review: This was my first Ian Mcewan book and it was truly magnificent. It is a must read! Rather than re-encapsulate the plot as previous reviewers have done so well, I would prefer to make a few other observations about this fine novel. First, my experience reading the novel was that it WAS NOT a slow read, but, I ,in fact, did read it slowly because I wanted to relish and savor each wonderful page. The book brought me back to my childhood middle school English teacher who first introduced my class to the form of the novel with Dicken's "Great Expectations". From that day forward, I always thanked her for teaching me how to appreciate this form and I definitely do put ATONEMENT in the same classic category as "Great Expectations". My English teacher nearly 40 years ago told us that a novel can reflect an entire lifetime of its characters or a period of a few years of their lives or merely about one day! I could not conceive a story about ONE SINGLE DAY and her teaching confused me but I accepted it and learned what else I could. Now, with ATONEMENT, I fully appreciate her teaching because Mcewan does both. Also, the characters and the plot revolved around one VULGAR four letter word which I choose not to type here because I want this review to clear the editors. You will have to get the book and read it to find that one word. Thirdly, for writers or others interested in creative writing, sprinkled throughout the novel, the author muses on the craft of writing and although these paragraphs don't necessarily advance the plot of this novel so much, they are nevertheless fascinating and insightful. WRITERS, read this book for those few paragraphs! ...
| 
