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Title: Atonement: A Novel by Ian McEwan ISBN: 0385503954 Publisher: Doubleday Pub. Date: 12 March, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.9
Rating: 5
Summary: Amazing characters, wonderful storytelling
Comment: As one who cannot stand the flood of plotless books looking so deeply inside their character's souls (thanks a lot Oprah) I had to be shoved into reading "Atonement". What a wonderful surprise. Easily the best piece of fiction I've read in years.
The story is about atonement for a terrible lie (did the liar know she was a liar?) told at a family gathering at an English manor in 1935. The effect of that lie on the lives of those she most loved and most hurt is followed through the English retreat at Dunkirk, and at an English hospital on the eve the great blitz. The story ends at the same manor in 1999.
The author takes the reader deep inside his three main characters and yet weaves a story well worth the rapid turning of pages. It's as if Joyce merged with Forsythe, incredible understanding of what it is to be human meets brilliant storytelling. I cared tremendously for each character, understood their pain, felt their joy, and I just loved the tragic but honest resolution.
I waited a week to write this review to see if the book "stays with you", it does. Ian McEwan is a genius.
Rating: 5
Summary: Among McEwan's best
Comment: I've read most of McEwan's novels, and Atonement is among the strongest.
Unlike some of McEwan's work that starts out strong and then loses momentum (Enduring Love and The Child in Time stand out as examples) Atonement grows in weight and tension as the novel unfolds.
The book's long and somewhat slow opening - a homecoming at the Tallis manor in the 1935 English countryside - sets the stage for all that follows and paints a picture full of McEwan's familiar threads: class in English society, love and jealousy. The most important theme concerns the complex and ultimately terrible nature of a child's psyche - passionate and conflicted but unsophisticated due to lack of experience and therefore dangerous if given a moment to exercise its power. The 13 year old Briony Tallis is precocious and self absorbed, but to a degree so are all children - the tragedy in this situation is that via a series of coincidences, blunders, and misunderstandings, an opportunity is created for Briony to wield her power over the adults around her. This is a wrong which can never be undone and destroys the lives of two of the people closest to her.
This opening section, heavily detailed and expertly staged, is in my opinion among the best that McEwan has written - all of the many details contribute to the scene's conclusion and build toward the rest of the novel. From there the book changes gears considerably; we're taken through WWII both via the battlefield in France and hospitals in London, and ultimately back to the Tallis country manor in 1999. The pacing is brisk and eventful.
The London section work less well than those of the other sections, and some of the hospital scenes struck me as overly melodramatic while adding little to the plot and the development of the characters. Overall, however, Atonement is a masterful piece of storytelling. This is a better novel than McEwan's Booker Prize winning Amsterdam which preceded it. Excellent. Highly recommended.
Rating: 5
Summary: Fine Novel On Guilt, Atonement and Absolution
Comment: Quite simply this is the finest novel from Ian McEwan that I've read, replete with much of his eloquent, poetic prose. Although one may not be initially compelled by the characters, most notably the protagonist Briony Tallis, the author creates a captivating, mesmerizing look at English country life near the eve of World War II. And then he skips ahead a few years, immersing us in the bloody aftermath of the fall of France and the British retreat from Dunkirk, where he picks up anew the tangled web of intrigue surrounding the lives of Briony, her older sister Cecilia and their neighbor Robbie Turner. Some may question the novel's brief epitaph-like ending, towards the close of the 20th Century, but here the author dwells on the choices - or lack thereof - made by his protagonist. Without divulging more details of the plot, this splendid novel is a powerful contemporary exploration of guilt, atonement and absolution; one which shouldn't be overlooked.
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Title: The Lovely Bones: A Novel by Alice Sebold ISBN: 0316666343 Publisher: Little Brown & Company Pub. Date: June, 2002 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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Title: Empire Falls by Richard Russo ISBN: 0375726403 Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: 12 April, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Bel Canto: A Novel by Ann Patchett ISBN: 0060934417 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 16 April, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: The Nanny Diaries: A Novel by Emma McLaughlin, Nicola Kraus ISBN: 0312278586 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: March, 2002 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Life of Pi by Yann Martel ISBN: 0151008116 Publisher: Harcourt Pub. Date: 04 June, 2002 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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