I'm sobbing as I write this review of this hauntingly beautiful, poignant and tragic novel. McEwan's writing is something I am completely in awe of- his uncanny ability to capture so many different worlds and minds within this tale is spell-binding. I feel left with the ghostly presence of all the characters- but especially Cecilia and Robbie and their love- and it is like the beautiful ghostly imagery of "the luminous absence shimmering above the wetness of the gravel", This book is a masterpiece and has a heavy weight on my heart (an ache that comes from reading something wonderful and heart-breaking all at once)- teaching me the inexorable consequences and possibilities that can come from hasty action and the hazy spectrum and blurred lines of the transition from childhood into adulthood. This is such an engaging exploration of guilt, coming of age, childhood naivety and intentions, the horrors of war, the power of the imagination and the human conscience. I look forward immensely to reading more of McEwan's novel and am envious of his way with words! Definitely going on my favourites shelf.

Wenn du Ende der 90er Jahre nach Luft gejapst hast, als der Vorhang über The Sixth Sense fiel, stehen die Chancen nicht schlecht, dass es hier ähnlich sein wird.
Noch die Schwächen, die man während des Lesens zu erkennen meint, erweisen sich schlussendlich als Teil des Ganzen. Ich bin begeistert. In meinen Augen eines der klügsten und am besten konstruierten Bücher der letzten 50 Jahre.

There are many reviews already of this book, and I did wonder whether the world needed any more. But I disagree so strongly with some of the opinions expressed that I'm afraid I have to exercise my right to reply. Two things in particular stand out.

Let me deal with the simpler one first. Some people seem appalled that the author is putting the guilt for this dreadful tragedy on the shoulders of a young girl. She didn't know what she was doing, they say; she was too young to understand the import of her actions, and we shouldn't hold her responsible. Well, it seems to me that this is completely beside the point. The novel, we finally learn, has been written by the girl herself. She's giving herself the blame for what happened. She's evidently spent her whole life wondering why she behaved the way she did, and she still doesn't really know. She's just trying to get the story as straight as she can, mainly so that she can understand it herself, and I found her efforts extremely moving. If anyone is claiming that people don't behave this way, all I can say is that their view of human nature is so different from mine that it'll be hard to have a meaningful conversation on the subject.

So now the second and more controversial part. Many reviewers dislike the post-modernist aspects. They complain that McEwan is taking a perverse pleasure in tricking the reader into a view of the story which is finally revealed as incorrect; that he's playing the unreliable narrator card out of sheer willfulness. Again, I completely disagree. I don't think these aspects of the book are irrelevant or peripheral; I think they're at the very core of it, and are what make it a great piece of literature. McEwan shows us a girl who becomes an author precisely because she wants to expiate the dreadful feelings of guilt she has suffered all her life. He lets her explain how it happened, in what we eventually discover is a book within a book. And the truly awful thing is that she can't do it. She cops out with a fake happy ending, because she still can't face what she did.

I don't think this is a trick; I think he's saying something about the very nature of writing. Many, many writers are like Briony. They write to absolve themselves of their guilt, but in the end they don't say what they want to say. It's too horrible to write down. They skirt around the issues, and end up presenting them in a more favourable light. If they're lucky, they may finally reach an age when they are so far removed from what happened that they can tell the story straight. This is what Briony does in the postscript, and I don't find it far-fetched. To take just one example, the first I happen to think of, look at Marguerite Duras. All her life, she kept thinking about her first love affair, and it coloured most of what she wrote. It was only when she was nearly 70 that she could set it down as L'Amant.

Before the events of the fountain, Briony was indeed just a little girl; all she could write was the amusingly mediocre Arabella. Afterwards, she had something that was worth saying, though it took a long time to figure out how to do that. When she'd completed her task, she was able to get back to the one she was engaged in when she was interrupted: I love the circular structure, which ends with Arabella being staged 60 years late. Of the many infuriating changes in the movie version, I think I was most annoyed by the removal of this key scene.

Wood burns, observes Monty Python's logician, as he gives an example of an incorrect syllogism; therefore, all that burns is wood. Similarly, the fact that much trickery is post-modern does not imply that all post-modernism is trickery. This is a great and heart-felt novel.

Es lo primero que leo de McEwan y seguro que no será lo último.

Expiación es su obra más conocida, leída y alabada, y eso supuso unas expectativas enormes. ¿Las ha alcanzado? Por lo general sí, aunque no me ha entusiasmado tanto como esperaba que hiciera. Creo que en parte es porque me olí el final, pero porque iba esperando el temido "spoiler" y eso me hizo estar muy alerta.
Creo que es un libro que veré más redondo aún en una relectura.

Mientras lo leía pensaba en que me habría gustado ver más integración entre las partes II y III, pero cuando terminé el libro entendí también el por qué de su estructura.

Lo mejor ha sido la caracterización de los personajes, en especial la de Briony.

Why, in a book containing violent rape, is the narrative preoccupied with condemning a young girl whose only crime was accusing the wrong man? Why, in a book containing violent rape, does the prose constantly refer to the girl's error as a "crime" and a "sin," as if it rose to the level of the rape itself? Why, in a book where two characters are fully cognizant of the rapist's identity (the rapist and his victim), is the girl with only partial knowledge raked over the coals for sending an innocent man to jail?

Then there are the strains on credulity: What kind of young woman believes the charlady's son over her own 13-year-old sister? What kind of young woman disowns her family for an accused rapist and remains faithful to him for years on the basis of a single romp in the library? What kind of young woman in the 1930s receives a note about her c*nt and finds it charming? (Plausible alternatives: "creepy" and "f*cking creepy.")

Why does this book turn into a war documentary halfway through? Why are we treated to every character's point-of-view except the rapist and his victim? How many panoramic views of flesh wounds and bedpans does it take to substitute for actual scene and character development?

And finally, why does anyone find any merit in this book whatsoever?

چند روزی رمان تاوان رو تموم کردم و خیلی برای نوشتن ریویواشو فکر کردم هیچی به ذهنم نرسید،چون که خیلی ها هرچیزی که لازمه را درموردش گفتن و حتی اسپویل هم کردن.

من کتاب رو خیلی دوست داشتم،توصیفات جنگ و عشق خیلی زیبا و غم انگیز به تصویر کشیده.
و بیشتر از همه اینکه این کتاب چون نایابه خیلی گرون فروخته میشه و راستش خیلی ناراحت کننده ست برام اینکه هیچوقت این کتاب قرار نیست تجدید چاپ بشه.

A scintillating piece of the purest gemstone, a diamond, was tracing around the forceps of a persona, the face of a mountain. The sky was a jet-black expanse devoid of sunlight and every color that pleases the eyes. There were small bursts of constant explosions inside that cavernous cave of red. A ripping sensation engulfed the whole scenery, like a piece of meat being torn by a pack of savage dogs. Emptiness. Then, a small stream of gold flowed from the heavens. Color was restored in the most simple of hues. The raging river was calmed and tamed. There was absolute stillness in the valley. A small crack, a curve, appeared on the face of the mountain. A smile. Then, I closed that little book called "Atonement".

Ian McEwan's masterpiece left me a man defined by his emotions. It was a breath-taking view I glimpsed but I fell into a pit of the darkest kind. I was a happy yet an unhappy man. The logical part of me was so astounded and amazed by that single confession, that act of self-abdication. The logical man was very impressed by that post-modernist ending. Yet, that man of feeling was abhorred and devastated. He was deftly crushed. I did not know what to say. Of course, in times like these, feeling is preemptive of thinking. One feels before one thinks. When the dust settled, all I felt was anger, then I saw the light. This is sort of reminiscent to Lolita. Where Nabokov uses literary artistry to, in a way, ask for consideration on Humbert's part. To mask the monster underneath a facade of beauty. McEwan adapts this concept in a different way. Instead of aesthetic artistry, though it is still present, the manipulation of fates and events become the central point of his undertaking. They both acknowledge the healing powers of the written word. Before the book even started, the reader is already given a Romantic novel quote--something out of Jane Austen's "Northanger Abbey." This sets the tone for a book that will be packed with literary allegory. Even the form of the book walks the reader through some of English lit's historical periods: Part One--Austen'esque Romanticism; Part Two--Historical Fiction War Story; Part Three--Victorian or Modern Memoir; and Part Four--Post Modern speculation and theory. You see, McEwan's Briony cleverly concocted a covering of gold to a broken statue of clay.

“How can a novelist achieve atonement when, with her absolute power of deciding outcomes, she is also God? There is no one, no entity or higher form that she can appeal to, or be reconciled with, or that can forgive her. There is nothing outside her. In her imagination she has set the limits and the terms. No atonement for God, or novelists, even if they are atheists. It was always an impossible task, and that was precisely the point. The attempt was all.”

Briony will never receive Atonement. But, I do believe that she has achieved At-One-Ment with herself if not with her readers, for she has done everything in her power to make up for her crime.

“A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended.”

If you consider the gravity of Briony's crime, the effect, the outcome, even when you put her innocence in consideration, one can't help but feel hatred for her. I admit, I did. But in time, the fact that it was the effect of a wildly imaginative ardor will soften the blow. Surely, atonement isn't for her, but sympathy is what she deserves and it's what she refuses to get. Some might consider her act of altering the story a Pontius Pilate act. But I admire her for it. She shuns sympathy even when she greatly needs it because she knows she doesn't deserve it. And though she might not be able to mend the flesh, she was able to conjure their spirit of love. Robbie and Cecilia might be gone, but their love lives in the memories of people who read their story. Much like Briony has etched herself in mine. I know what she looks like. I watched her grow up. I was there every step of the way, and I will keep a part of her alive in me until the day I take my last breath. But even then, that wouldn't be the end. Others will take her up in their memories and keep her alive. Sure, she might not be the same as when I envisioned her. But she'll live far longer than I. So the same will go for the lovers. Therefore I wholeheartedly agree with the excerpt below.

“But what really happened? The answer is simple: the lovers survive and flourish.”

Literature immortalized their love, and that's all that matters. Not her Atonement, but their Love.

Ho amato questo libro dal primo capitolo all'epilogo finale.
Ho amato lo stile di McEwan, sia per la sua maestria nel descrivere i pensieri di un uomo morente che le giustificazioni di una ragazzina che si nasconde dietro il pretesto di una sorella in pericolo per cercare di non rimanere esclusa dalla vita delle persone che più ama.
Briony, un personaggio così odiato che io ho trovato indiscutibilmente la migliore ragazzina egocentrica e piena di presunzione mai resa protagonista di un romanzo.

What Mr. McEwan gives us here is a story about love and war, yes, but much more than that it is a story about guilt, perception, and story-telling.

I will say that I felt as if this novel had a felling of dooming, damning taint from start to finish. There is an ominous foreboding that hangs over the beautifully orchestrated language. I half-wish there could have been some points to lighten the story, some glimmers of natural joy that wasn't sprung from malice or discomfort, but I guess that's just not that kind of story - in fact I suppose the end of naive, free felicity is somewhat how this story begins. This is a story that stems from the mistakes(?) we can make by being blindly sure of the truth of our perspectives and how a lifetime of guilt and a struggle for penance can follow. It is not a light book, but it is realistic in as far as it explores it's topics.

While the best of this book is built on internal struggles, I think there is also something of class, history, and the creative process that should be thought about. There is a layering of themes, feelings, thoughts, and yes, I am going to say it once more, perspectives, that is mesmerizing. It's a bitter, nuanced pill that as the reader you hate to swallow, but feel obligated to chew and digest all the same; and the aftertaste will linger long afterward.

As for an ending that some question, perhaps even dislike, I think it kind - the best thing an author might be able to do for their 'characters', the one last attempt at some form of atonement.

What a lovely reread this was! I first read this novel almost a decade ago, and the story has stayed with me. The prose is gorgeous, and again I was completely absorbed in this novel.

My favorite character is Briony, the young writer seeking atonement for a mistake she made as a child. And my heart aches for her sister, Cecilia, and her wronged lover, Robbie. I've only read a few of McEwan's books, but I like his writing style so much I want to read more. Highly recommended.

Favorite Quotes
"Was everyone else really as alive as she was?... If the answer was yes, 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. One could drown in irrelevance."

"There did not have to be a moral. She need only show separate minds, as alive as her own, struggling with the idea that other minds were equally alive. It wasn't only wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding, above all, it was the failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you. And only in a story could you enter these different minds and show how they had an equal value. That was the only moral a story need have."

"At that moment, the urge to be writing was stronger than any notion she had of what she might write."

"From this new and intimate perspective, she learned a simple, obvious thing she had always known, and everyone knew; that a person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn, not easily mended."

One of the few examples I can think of where the movie version is just as good as the book - not better, not worse. Whether I watched Atonement, read it, or did both (highly recommended), I was blown away by the sheer amazingness (is that a word? it is now) of Ian McEwan's story.

I'm almost tempted to give the movie preference, because I prefer the screenwriters' ending to McEwan's. That's the only real distinction I make between Atonement, the movie and Atonement, the novel: the end of the movie makes me cry, and the end of the novel does not.

A masterpiece. Review to come.