I hated this book, and after putting it down, I gained a decided aversion to all things Ian McEwan.

First of all, the writing. Yes, it's beautiful and such. But it's LONG. And BORING. Robbie spends an entire chapter in the bathtub. And nothing happens.

And then--aha! Things start to get rolling. Cecelia and Robbie disappear into the library, Briony walks in on them, Lola gets raped, Briony comes to the wrong conclusion because of her pre-existing fears of Robbie. And away goes Robbie, and the story begins.

My second issue with the story are the characters. Briony is cast as the villain. But shouldn't a twelve-year-old be legitimately creeped out by what Briony learns in the first part of the story? Aren't her suspicions (though not her conclusion) legitimate? I had a hard time feeling sorry for Cee and Robbie because I couldn't see them as victims, but as selfish idiots. And horny ones at that.

And my third, and greatest problem: What happened to Lola. Probably the main reason I had trouble feeling sorry for any of the main characters was because I was stuck on the rape of a young girl. How can I feel agony at Briony's predicament? She sees Lola raped and then spends the rest of her life trying to atone for Cee and Robbie's separation--without ever going back to set things right with her cousin, or to see that Marshall got what he deserved. Cee and Robbie don't seem to care either; they're too fixed on their own broken hearts. Lola gets raped and marries her attacker without knowing it, and the only thing the three main characters care about is that Cee and Robbie didn't finish their shag. Really?

It isn't just the shallowness of the characters that leaves a bad taste in my mouth; it's the fact that McEwan presents that as okay. He doesn't care either. Maybe I could have stomached Atonement if that part of the plot had been different. As it was, Lola and Marshall affected me more than anyone else in the story, and I was never able to get over their subplot, or even bring myself to tolerate the rest of the characters.

Awful book, okay style, author I'll never touch again.

I have decided to re-read this book, remembering that I liked it very much when I first read it several years ago, after watching the movie with Keira Knightley.

The book is just as excellent as I remember it.

It is about an imaginative 13 year old, who witnesses a few things between her sister and a young man. She doesn't understand those things, draws her own very wrong conclusions and ends up ruining the lives of several people.

McEwan's prose is gorgeous. It's beautifully written and a joy to read. It's a book I can't put down after starting. It's a book that made me shudder, wince and sigh. And it's a book that in the very end made me cry and still it's a the most gorgeous written piece of fiction.

A lesson to us all: never put anything in print that one day might come back to bite you in the ass.

Having already seen the movie, I didn't particularly want to read the book (I've never read Mario Puzo's The Godfather, now have I?), but seeing as this book is a modern great, I felt it my duty to drag it from my book cave.
Pleasingly, McEwan writes with aplomb about the human psyche: of lust, loathing, immaturity and guilt; his prose is word perfect.
That said, the novel suffers from its own identity crisis, a mezze of Jane Austen, followed by a main course of Sebastian Faulks.
The author's genius, though, is in causing us to forget that his book was actually written in the modern day. Very clever!
One of our protagonists, Robbie, puts his lustful thoughts to paper in a way that would merely seem vulgarly juvenile in a modern-day text message: Been dreamin' bout kissing your c**t, yeah?
But when inscribed in ink, onto 1930s vellum stationery, the "C" word is both shocking and ruinous.

There is no doubt that McEwan is one of Britain's greatest literary gods, his beautiful prose had me purrrring with delight ... Ah, but here's the thing...

The story.
Nnnng, grmmmphh!
Oh, it just didn't keep me enthralled.
There, I've said it!
In addition, I have my own crazy theory that Briony might just be the author's imagined avatar of his younger self. : )

5 out of 5 for the writing.
3 out of 5 for the story.