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Loading... Atonement (2001)by Ian McEwan
  
» 59 more Booker Prize (8) BBC Big Read (69) Best Crime Fiction (58) Favourite Books (497) Books Read in 2015 (301) 20th Century Literature (239) A Novel Cure (35) Best family sagas (93) 2000s decade (3) Books tagged favorites (258) Elegant Prose (50) Unread books (615) Best of Brit Lit (85) Top Five Books of 2015 (669) Love and Marriage (18) Same Title (7) Summer Books (4) War Stories (16) Best French Books (48) Books Read in 2016 (3,670) I Can't Finish This Book (142)  Rascalstar | Jan 21, 2017 |  Fuck this. Sad as the movie and Briony is still a bitch. (  ) kemilyh1988 | Jan 16, 2017 | I really wanted to like this book. You'll notice I said book, not story. The story wasn't the problem, per say, although the very end left me completely unsatisfied and with an immense book hangover that had people at the airport asking if I was ok. I loved the story; I really did. Robbie was everything I wanted him to be and more. Cecilia could have probably used a little more depth, but it was relatively tolerable since she didn't factor into the story as much as I'd anticipated she would. I think I still would have liked more background on her though. No. Maybe not more background. Perhaps "dimension" would be a better word. She felt very... flat as a character. Briony, however, was the most insufferable little snot of a character I've ever had the displeasure to come to know in my literary adventures. I almost couldn't finish the book because of how much I hated her. She reminded me of every unflattering stereotype of the youngest child and an only child combined into one character. I couldn't have been happier when the first section of the book ended and I didn't have to deal with her 13 year old self for a few pages while we explored Robby's brushes with death in WWII France. I wish I could give this book separate ratings, one for the story itself and one for the overall book. Despite the 3 stars, I give the book only 2. The story however is at 4.5 stars for me. (  ) cebellol | Jan 10, 2017 | The book was so beautifully written, especially at the beginning, that I had high hopes and even mentally compared it to the works of E.M. Forster. However, something went wrong along the way...it is hard for me to put my finger on exactly what it was. While continuing to be compelling, the book somehow shook off the magic spell it had been weaving around me. The jarring ending saved it somewhat, but still left me feeling as though something important had been left out, a problem I find with too many modern books that are declared instant classics. I might read it again someday and do not plan to get rid of my copy, but I am in no hurry to see the movie version or to read the book again--or for that matter, try any of McEwan's other works. ( ) aurelas | Dec 23, 2016 | Atonement by Ian McEwan; (4*) I found this novel to be completely absorbing. The first part draws the reader into a confined setting which occurs on a very hot day in a country house with ongoing preparations of welcoming the son home. He is bringing a friend with him. The book allows the reader to observe scenes portrayed from the perspectives of the characters within the house. Although McEwan focuses more on the internal lives of the characters than on external events, he devotes most of the attention to their impressions and reflections on what takes place around them. The reader can feel the tension building towards what will most certainly culminate in a disaster. The second part of the novel describes the dire consequences of these events which grow out of the lively imagination of a young girl who half sees and half imagines what is happening in the house and tries, with good intentions, to put things right. Children are very good at seeing everything that goes on around them but they do not yet have the life experiences to understand these events. McEwan ties everything together beautifully in the last part of the book where our young girl has grown old and has spent all the intervening years trying to reconcile herself with what she did as a child. The author does a marvelous job of tying up all the threads. I don't want to spoil anyone's reading by giving away too many details. The book was different than what I expected but I found it to be very good and I highly recommend it. ( ) rainpebble | Dec 6, 2016 |
 McEwan is technically at the height of his powers, and can do more or less anything he likes with the novel form. He shows this fact off in the first section of Atonement, in which he does one of the hardest things a good writer can do: engrossingly, sustainedly, and convincingly impersonate a bad one.  McEwan is crafty. Even as he shows us the damages of story-telling, he demonstrates its beguilements on every page. Atonement is full of timeworn literary contrivances--an English country house, lovers from different classes, an intercepted letter--rendered with the delicately crafted understanding of E.M. Forster. If it's plot, suspense and a Bergsonian sensitivity to the intricacies of individual consciousnesses you want, then McEwan is your man and ''Atonement'' your novel. It is his most complete and compassionate work to date. Ian McEwan's remarkable new novel ''Atonement'' is a love story, a war story and a story about the destructive powers of the imagination. It is also a novel that takes all of the author's perennial themes -- dealing with the hazards of innocence, the hold of time past over time present and the intrusion of evil into ordinary lives -- and orchestrates them into a symphonic work that is every bit as affecting as it is gripping. It is, in short, a tour de force. Ian McEwan’s new novel, which strikes me as easily his finest, has a frame that is properly hinged and jointed and apt for the conduct of the ‘march of action’, which James described as ‘the only thing that really, for me at least, will produire L’OEUVRE’. Has the adaptation
Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 038572179X, Paperback)Ian McEwan's Booker Prize-nominated Atonement is his first novel since Amsterdam took home the prize in 1998. But while Amsterdam was a slim, sleek piece, Atonement is a more sturdy, more ambitious work, allowing McEwan more room to play, think, and experiment.We meet 13-year-old Briony Tallis in the summer of 1935, as she attempts to stage a production of her new drama "The Trials of Arabella" to welcome home her older, idolized brother Leon. But she soon discovers that her cousins, the glamorous Lola and the twin boys Jackson and Pierrot, aren't up to the task, and directorial ambitions are abandoned as more interesting prospects of preoccupation come onto the scene. The charlady's son, Robbie Turner, appears to be forcing Briony's sister Cecilia to strip in the fountain and sends her obscene letters; Leon has brought home a dim chocolate magnate keen for a war to promote his new "Army Ammo" chocolate bar; and upstairs, Briony's migraine-stricken mother Emily keeps tabs on the house from her bed. Soon, secrets emerge that change the lives of everyone present.... The interwar, upper-middle-class setting of the book's long, masterfully sustained opening section might recall Virginia Woolf or Henry Green, but as we move forward--eventually to the turn of the 21st century--the novel's central concerns emerge, and McEwan's voice becomes clear, even personal. For at heart, Atonement is about the pleasures, pains, and dangers of writing, and perhaps even more, about the challenge of controlling what readers make of your writing. McEwan shouldn't have any doubts about readers of Atonement: this is a thoughtful, provocative, and at times moving book that will have readers applauding. --Alan Stewart, Amazon.co.uk (retrieved from Amazon Thu, 12 Mar 2015 18:06:21 -0400) Imaginative thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis, misinterpreting a scene between her older sister Cecilia and Robbie Turner, the housekeeper's son, later accuses Robbie of a crime she has no proof he committed and spends years trying to atone for her actions.… (more) |
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Wikipedia in English (1)
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If you want to read spoilers, you can do that elsewhere. I'd guess that more sophisticated readers may enjoy the book more with its many nuances and layers and stages of life. (