Rating: 
Summary: Gorgeous lush writing, plodding plot
Review: I just finished Atonement with my book club. Out of seven of us, I was the only one who was happy I read it.McEwan's writing is so sensual and detailed that you can truly picture his scenes in your mind's eye. It is truly poetic and beautiful description. For me, this made the book worth reading. On the other hand, the book is divided into three segments and the first segment is excrutiatingly slow. If you can manage to slog through this first section, you will be rewarded by the remaining two thirds of the book which are much faster paced and culminate in a "twist". I should warn you that the twist is subtle and requires careful reading of the final chapter. It was the type of twist that left me thinking, not the type that I sat up and said "oh my goodness, how clever!". In terms of the subject matter, you will follow the life of a young girl who accuses a member of her household of a terrible crime and in fact ruins his life. The book follows the accuser and the accused through time and through a war. I didn't feel particularly close to any of the characters by the end of the book so on some level the ending really didn't move me. I did give it three stars though simply for the fabulous use of the language. I am anxious to try another book by the author to see if the plots are more engaging, because the writing is so rhythmic and lush. This may be a great book to listen to on tape. I found that reading it aloud was actually more enjoyable than reading it silently.
Rating: 
Summary: On the fence...
Review: A few days after finishing "Atonement" I am still on the fence about it. On the one hand, it is a brilliantly depicted story of guilt and attempted redemption. On the other, it is one of the slowest, most over detailed books I've ever read. The first section, which is 180 pages long, could just as well have been 90. I'm reminded of those overstuffed, overdone Masterpiece Theater series that go on way too long. It also employs a twist ending -- I'm not giving anything away with this sentence --that isn't very original. I've seen similar twists in a half dozen movies. Now for the spoilers... don't read this if you don't want to know... I think the perspective of the book is a rejection of the concept of atonement. Briony's attempts to right her wrongs fall flat because only God, or the existence of God, can forgive what she's done. She, as a writer, can only confess to her sins and give them a context and perspective. A greater authority needs to bestow forgiveness to her; she can't do it herself. That accounts for the feeling of disatisfaction the reader has at the end. Briony's attempt at atonement has failed. I give the book points for taking on a complex theological theme and answering it intelligently. I took a class in college called "Theological Themes in Fiction" and I have no doubt this book is now leading the syllabus of classes like that. What I don't give it points for is making me care about what happens to these characters. Briony is a self-centered nitwit, and I'm not sure I ever again want to spend 300 pages with such a character. I don't regret reading "Atonement" but I don't intend to read McEwan again.
Rating: 
Summary: Wonderfully drawn characters and crystalline descriptions
Review: Atonement is a novel of finely drawn characters and compelling descriptions. The novel is divided into four sections, each quite different. In the first section, Briony, an imaginative and and self-righteous 13-year-old girl involves herself in he budding romance between her older sister Cecilia and Robbie Turner, the Cambridge educated son of the family charwoman. The individuals in the family, their roles and relationships are carefully and convincingly described. We truly believe in Briony, and her actions with their unjust and terrible outcome seem genuine to us. The results of Briony's actions are followed through the desperate evacuation of the British army at Dunkirk and the arrival of the wounded at a hospital in London, where Briony is working as a nurse. Finally we meet Briony again as an old woman who has become a well-known writer. In telling Briony's story, McEwan reveals some secrets of the writer's experience: as a child with a calling to invent stories, as a young writer submitting her first attempts for publication, and finally as an experienced writer checking the accuracy of her prose.
Rating:
Summary: WOW
Review: What an amazing novel. If you are a fan of well written thought-provoking books this is for you. This was my favorite book of the year.
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Summary: Briony's Story
Review: One of the best books I have lately read. Wonderful style, the author Mr. Mac Ewan is a magician of the pen.
The story spans from the 30s to the late 90s and can be divided into three parts.
The first part deals with the description of Briony's family: the Tallis, their house, their friends, their life which goes on quietly. Then the crime, Briony's crime against her sister's innocent lover. A kind of silly jealousy leads Briony to accuse the young man of child abuse.
I think this is the best part of the book, the characters are so well defined, the author is able to write about their feelings in a kind of "stream of consciousness" which lets the reader get deep inside their minds, especially Briony's mind, because, after all, this is Briony's story.
The second part is about the horrors of World War Two and about Briony as a young woman, a nurse in a London Hospital, she has to tend to the wounded soldiers, and here life is very hard and painful and this is, maybe, her atonement.
In the third part we find Briony again, an old woman who is going to fall into dementia, she outlived all the others still bearing the burden of her crime to the last.
Briony is not a hateful character, she was just a spoiled child who didn't even think,at the time, what her action would lead to.
This is a book I heartily recommend to all those who appreciate good literature.
Rating:
Summary: Must Read
Review: Bravo--if you want a book that will drop your chin at the end, I reccommend this book. Mr. McEwan's uses his pen like a magician's wand and leaves you mesmerized at the end.
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Summary: A well crafted melodrama, dont be put off by its 'literary'
Review: I had heard about this book for quite a while, and it was on my list of 'must read, someday' books. Having read it now, I consider it a well crafted melodrama
so don't be put of by its 'literary' reputation. The book is divided into four major episodes concerning a certain family and friends before, during and after World War II. There is an air of foreboding in each episode and each chapter seems to detail events which, while appearing normal, seem to be bringing doom closer. In this, I think, the crafting to the pace of the book draws the reader onwards to find out what happens. The descriptive passages had less power for me than the dialogue, however the story was compelling.
The main character is an aspiring novelist and this I found to be the aspect I liked least. I find writers writing about writing to be self referential, boring and bland, and this features more in the book than I think is necessary. It seemed to me to break, rather than enhance, the flow of the book and to provide very little by way of insight into the thought processes of the characters. This was the main flaw I thought in an
otherwise entertaining read.
Rating:
Summary: Masterful, touching, thought-provoking
Review: I highly recommend this work. The Atonement is the novel itself. I was expecting a lot and it turned out to be more complex and rewarding than I expected. McEwan is a masterful novelist and, although I thought the beginning was slow, the last 200 pages of the book were simply so good and often so riveting that the novel is beyond criticism. The ending is great. Very touching.
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Summary: Patience Rewarded
Review: Here's how I can best illustrate the feeling of reading this book: imagine Game 7 of the World Series, top of the ninth, the home team up by a run, bases loaded, the count is 3-2 to the hitter at the plate. Everyone is waiting for that last pitch to decide the game one way or another. The pitcher gets ready to throw, the crowd holds its breath...and the pitcher throws to first base. Then he walks around the mound to gather his thoughts, has a meeting with the catcher, gathers his thoughts again, shakes off a few signs, and then just as the crowd can take no more, he rears back and gets that last strike and the crowd goes wild. McEwan is like that pitcher on the mound--so slow and deliberate with the first part of the book that it's like Chinese water torture. The night when everything changes in Briony's life unfolds so slowly that any reader who isn't patient is going to get tired of the book before it really hits its stride. I had to force myself to keep going on faith alone that it was going to get better, that things would start HAPPENING soon, that all this Victorianesque society garbage (where the high drama is what to wear and whether or not to cook a roast on a hot day) would be worth it. And like the pitcher in my analogy, it is worth it when McEwan throws a perfect strike. The writing is solid, the important characters are well-described and have real flaws, and once it gets going there's the drama pulling me in. I always wanted to know what would happen next. What would happen to Robbie and Cecelia and Briony? What really got to me was the end. I won't spoil it for readers, but it was so touching that I almost cried. As someone who writes, I can see a lot of Briony in myself and my own work, and her thoughts about writing at the end really gave me pause to take a good look at myself and what I'm doing. The end took me so by surprise and was so satisfying, that I can easily look past any small flaws with this book and give it the five stars it deserves. If you can get through the first 150 or so pages, the rest is worth it. Don't take my word for it, find out for yourself. You'll be glad you did. As a little aside, I have to say I'm surprised this book did not win more awards. I read many recent Pulitzer winners like "Middlesex", "Empire Falls", and "Kavalier and Clay", but none of them satisfied me on such an intellectual and emotional level. If you wanted to go find my reviews of all those (which you don't), you'd see that all of them, while great books, had minor problems that couldn't be overlooked. Other than the slow beginning, however, "Atonement" has no real problems for me in its plot or writing style. If my opinion mattered for anything (which it doesn't), I would have given it a Pulitzer without question.
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Summary: Unforgiven Atonement
Review: Unforgiven Atonement Atonement \e-ton-ment\: To do something to make up for a wrong done. Ian McEwan's Atonement is a wonderful novel of childhood and adulthood, guilt and forgiveness, love and war. He ties all of this together in an extraordinarily ambitious way. He grabs the reader's attention and keeps it throughout the novel with imagery that is luminously real. With brilliant imagery, McEwan depicts life during WW11 to the closing of the twentieth century. This novel is true to its title. It's about actual Atonement. The main character, Briony Tallis, sees a crime as a youthful girl. Her overactive imagination and longing to mature leads her to make up a story, instead of telling what she really saw. This crime brings about chaos in her life, as well as the lives of the family and friends surrounding her. This crime lives on in the hearts and minds of everyone. This one incident splits the family down the middle. As Briony ages, she spends the rest of her life trying to atone her crime. The novel opens up in "another beautiful day in London" of 1935. McEwan starts out describing the mansion where the Tallis family lives. Briony's thoughts on the house are very detailed. "Their room was a pitiful mess of clothes, wet towels, orange peel, torn-up pieces of a comic arranged around a sheet of paper, upended chairs partly covered by blankets and the mattress at a slew." With this gratifying depiction McEwan leads the reader to believe they are in the very room. In the second part of the novel, the setting changes to the heat of WW11. Here, the author depicts the horror of war. "When they reached the level crossing, after a 3-mile walk, along a narrow road, he saw the path he was looking for meandering off to the right, then dipping and rising toward a copse that covered a low hill to the northwest." Vigorous detail like this makes the novel interesting, and somewhat moving. At the closing of the tale, the story jumps forward into the end of the twentieth century, where the story comes to a close. The characters in the story are unbelievably life like. The reader gets insight on each of the characters inner thoughts and struggles. All of the characters have flaws, some more obvious than others, yet they're all still present. Briony wants passionately to grow up, and be considered an adult long before she is actually ready for the responsibility, making her very confident. "She had no doubt. She could describe him. There was nothing she could not describe." Lola, Briony's cousin was the one whom the crime was committed against. Lola is a strangely interesting character. "Nothing much was ever required of Lola after that, for she was able to retreat behind an air of wounded confusion, and as a treasured patient, recovering victim, lost chilled, let herself be bathed in the concern and guilt of the adults in her life." She hid behind a wall, not wanting to express herself, not letting anything out, just bottling it all up inside of her. Yet, she does not stay this way, nor does Briony. In the second part of the novel, during WW11, Briony is a young nurse. She has matured greatly, and she's ready to atone her crime. "Did she really think she could hide behind some borrowed notions of modern writing, and drown her guilt in a stream of consciousness?" As the novel progresses, Briony's maturity and longing to be free from this lifetime of guilt also progresses. "How could that constitute an ending? I'm too old, too frightened, too much in love with the shred of life I have remaining. I face an incoming tide of forgetting, and then oblivion." Briony is a very dynamic character. She has so many different moods and thoughts, all complicated and each intricate making the story believable. The diction used throughout the novel is extraordinary. The use of extensive vocabulary makes this book an adventure. His use of metaphors and similes makes the book peculiar and textured. "The agreeable nullity of Leon's life was a polished artifact, its ease deceptive, its limitations achieved by invisible hard work and the accidents of character, none of which she could hope to rival." The imagery in this book paints a perfectly detailed word picture in the readers mind. "The island temple, built in the style of Nicholas Revett in the late 1780s, was intended as a point of interest, and eye-catching feature to enhance the pastoral ideal, and had of course no religious purpose at all. It was near enough to the water's edge, raised upon a projecting bank, to cast an interesting reflection in the lake, and from most perspective the row of pillars and the pediment above them were charmingly half obscured bye the elms and oaks that had grown up around. Closer to, the temple had a sorrier look: moisture rising through a damaged damp course had caused chunks of stucco to fall away. Sometime in the late nineteenth century clumsy repairs were made with unpainted cement which had turned brown and gave the building a mottled, diseased appearance." With only words, McEwan has the ability to strongly persuade opinion. Ian McEwan's style is precarious. He manages to take a story without much plot and make it riveting. The movement of the story is not in the plot; it's in the characters and the way McEwan jumps between the characters and their inner thoughts. The characters themselves reflect his style. Briony changes many times throughout the novel. At one point she works as a nurse, taking long shifts, making her delusional. This makes her narrative unreliable. Most of the characters have an inner conflict, external conflict, or both, making their narrative partial. The book consists of much imagery, with a very subtle, devious plot. The imagery foreshadows the plot, but not the first time the book is read. The book is very interesting, but definitely not for everyone. The author's extensive knowledge of vocabulary makes the novel difficult to read. The story takes surprising twists and turns, keeping the reader attached, and on edge. The book is hard to follow, but when everything comes together, the story becomes intense.
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