Rating: 
Summary: Love, Rejection, Redemption
Review: Love and Redemption are tried and true subjects for novels. However Ian McEwan's Atonement tells the story in an original, gripping manner. This book will get inside your head, and during the periods that you are forced to put it down, it will dredge up those times in your life that you made a mistake, and tried to make things right. Of course we can't make everything right all the time. Some things we can't ever fix--and here we are, with material for a novel. McEwan brings us characters in a disfunctional family in pre-war England. A big, terrible mistake by a naive young female family member changes everyone's lives, mostly for the worse. Years pass and the girl grows up and realizes just how big a mistake she has made, and sets out to make things right. This turns out to be dreadfully difficult. World War II has started. The rest of the family has their own problems. The end holds a surprise; it is delightful. Can hearts, lives, and people that have been broken be made whole again? Once a huge mistake has been made, does honesty, sincerity and truthfullness win the day? Or can our actions haunt us with unreconciled acts and estrangement. McEwan gives us hints. The judgement is ours. This is one of the best books of the last few years. If you like excellent, compelling writing, it will stick in your mind for a while after you're done.
Rating:
Summary: "The drama of a broken teacup," or vase in this case
Review: Not only is this a tightly-wound, suspenseful novel, it is also a brilliant realization of the power of fiction to create reality. Also amazing is the ability of this middle-age man to plumb the depths of a creative and psychologically complex pre-adolscent girl, Briony. Briony sins--there's no other word for it--and must atone for the wreckage she's caused. How this reckoning unfolds is at the heart of this powerful post-modern morality tale.
Rating: 
Summary: Very slow read
Review: This was my first Ian McEwan book and it was such a slow read for me. Ian describes EVERYTHING in too much detail for my taste. I was impatient to get on with the story. I realize this descriptiveness is what appeals to others. I wouldn't recommend this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Whole is more than the sum of the parts.
Review: Atonement consists of 4 sections, with the first section comprising about half the book. This section is set at an English country house between the world wars, takes place primarily in one day, and is populated with a mother, 3 siblings, a visitor, 3 cousins, and a family protégé. It shifts narrative perspective between the characters, but it is the youngest sibling, a young 13 year old aspiring writer, who is the primary character. The writing in this section is often beautiful; however, it has that almost repetitious quality that, while very effective, made this reader sometimes want to say, 'enough'. This first section begins with the production of a play by the 13 year old, and this entire narrative thread is unnecessarily long. The rest of the book is written with an economy of style and is quite arresting. The second section is narrated by an infantryman during the retreat to Dunkirk, and really stands on its own as a an excellent piece of writing, although it fits into the overall schema of the novel. In fact, one of the outstanding qualities of the novel is how all the sections fit together, so that the whole is so much more than the sum of the parts.
Rating:
Summary: Why does everyone love this book??
Review: Atonement has been described as a "symphonic novel." This is due to the fact that the novel has four parts, as a symphony has four movements; Atonement is not a novel of any great lyrical quality. It is one of the few works that I have read, that managed to raise expectations and suspense to a high level, and then not remotely deliver. In the engrossing Part 1, our heroine Briony sees her sister (Cecilia) and her family's servant (Robbie) in some overtly sexual situations. She secretly loves Robbie so this makes her upset, and she decides to get revenge. When Briony's cousin, Lola, is attacked later that day, Briony pins the blame on Robbie, and he is shipped off to prison. Predictably, Briony will now atone for her wrongs. But Part 2 begins, and with no transition whatsoever, the reader is whisked off to World War II, and the British Army's retreat from Dunkirk. Robbie is no longer in prison, he is in the army. Then, predictably he retreats and goes home to England. Part 3: Briony is now a nurse and she treats wounded soldiers. At the end of Part 3 she meets up with Cecilia and Robbie and tells them that she will atone for her wrongs. Then Part 3 ends. Part 4 begins 60 years later, in the present day. Briony is old and muses about how she has never atoned for what she died. She has written a book called, you guessed it, Atonement, in which she atones, but she has never published this book. Part 1 of Atonement showed great promise. It was tautly written, and ended with suspense. How was Briony going to deal with what she had done? However, in the remaining 3 parts, this fundamental question is never answered! The final 3 parts skip around to different locales and seem to be different novels sharing the same characters. They bear no resemblance to the themes in Part 1. After raising my expectations to a high level, Atonement did not deliver. It likely has the least-fulfilling conclusion, and resolution that I have ever seen in a novel. Don't come to Atonement expecting a plot dealing with atonement, because the plot doesn't deal with it.
Rating:
Summary: Brief Bottom Line Review
Review: On a scale from 1 to 7 (7=outstanding, 4=average, 1=horrendous) ... Plot: 4
Structure: 7 (Can't rave about it enough)
Language: 6 (Very accessible, beautiful without calling attention to itself)
Character Development: 6 (Briony will definitely stay with you)
Action: 3
Descriptions and settings: 4 While on the surface not much happens in this story, the implications are huge, and McEwan's ability to make you identify with the different characters is superb, even though the characters are not always likeable and their actions are complex. The way the story is structured is so magnificent that it makes up for the plot's lack of interest overall. The middle section dealing with the retreat from Dunkirk while treating the subject realistically, lacks drama for a war scene. But all of these are minor quibbles. The story will have you thinking about it's implications for days and weeks after you've finished reading it. Some of the other books I've read this year including Franzen's "The Corrections," Faber's "The Crimson Petal and the White," Marquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude," McEwan's own "Amsterdam," and even the first three Harry Potters are fading from my memory, while "Atonement" continues to linger on along with another disturbing (though far less accessible) masterpiece I recently read for the first time, "The Sound and the Fury." I think McEwan's book will last in the public's memory as well as Faulkner's.
Rating: 
Summary: Read it
Review: Atonement may start off a little slow, but ends up very good. I really liked this book alot and i would suggest it to any kind of reader. McEwan is an excellent writer with an intellegent style. His diction is amazing and makes the book that much better. However, the conclusion to the book really could have been left out. I found it tedious and tiresome. Read this book though, you wont regret it!
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Read!!!
Review: After much hype about this novel, I was hesitant in reading it. However, that hestitation was misguided as it was one of the better novels I have read for awhile. For me, "Atonement" started off as a kaleidoscope of sorts, where the situation is the same, but everyone's point of view is tainted by their experience (or in Briony's case, lack thereof). McEwan combines a picturesque mirage with a sort of "Catch 22" absurdity in the second chapter. The unreliable narrative flows very well. At the end, you end up wondering if the novel is the figment of Briony's imagination, starting from page 1.
Rating:
Summary: Rich, intricate and fascinating story
Review: A warm summer day in 1935: thirteen-year old Briony Tallis has written her first play in honour of her brother Leon returning home, but her niece and nephews are not up to performing it. While she is sulking in her room, she sees her sister Cecilia strip of her clothes and jump into a fountain in front of the cleaning lady's son Robbie. Her ample imagination turns this scene into something it is absolutely not and when at night something awful happens she interprets it completely wrong, an interpretation that will change the lifes of herself, Cecilia and Robbie.
The second and third parts of the book are situated at the beginning of the war: the horrors of the evacuation of the British army at Dunkirk and the life at a London hospital. Finally in the fourth part, set in 1999, it becomes clear that this book is indeed one big atonement.
This is an incredibly rich book and very smoothly written. It begged me to continue reading, even though the setting of the first part (a rich English family in the thirties) is not particularly interesting to me. The second and third parts very vividly describe the horrors of war and the fourth part glues the whole book together and on the other hand also provides an unexpected twist that puts part of the story in a whole new perspective. An absolute must-read.
Rating:
Summary: Overwrought, Overdone, Overkill
Review: Not on my best-seller list! I really had to trudge through the first 50-80 pages to gain a sense of direction. Too much time and attention was devoted to unncessary scenery and minutiae at the characters' expense. Only from the book jacket did I get a real grasp of the time frame for the story. Was the over-wrought description of the vase really necessary? Did it lend anything to the story? I just didn't find the characters well-developed -- given the lack of dialogue and interaction. Part II felt very much like a reincarnation of "Birdsong" by Sebastian Faulks. The book's only saving grace was the juxtaposition of the final section, and the questions left to ponder. Hardly enough, in my humble estimation, to warrant the first 150 pages.
|
