On the hottest day of the summer of 1935, thirteen year-old Briony
Tallis, a girl with a strange mind and a facility with words is
preparing to cast, direct and star in her first melodrama. By the
end of the day The Trials of Arabella remains unperformed, but
Briony's talent for fantasy starts a chain of events that will
dramatically change the lives of many and haunt her for more than
sixty years. Atonement has three distinct parts. The first, making
up more than half the novel, describes the events of that summer's
day in 1935. The Tallises are an affluent family living in middle
class comfort in Surrey. Father is a hazy figure, a senior ministry
figure working on plans for the impending war and carrying on a
secret affair in London. Neither he nor his frail and anxious wife
are significant influences in their three children's lives.
Cecilia, newly graduated from Cambridge, is restless and uncertain
about the path of her future life. Leon, less well defined as a
character, is the older brother. Briony is the youngest child,
immersed in a fantasy world of her own making, who through a false
and careless accusation destroys the life of Cecilia's lover,
Robbie Turner, and her prospects of happiness. In part two, the
narrative moves to 1940. Robbie has been released from prison and
is one of the thousands of British soldiers serving in France and
fleeing to Dunkirk from the German army. Briony and Cecilia,
estranged from one another, are suffering in their own purgatory as
nurses in London. In the third, shorter (and least successful)
section set in 1999 we discover that Briony, now in her seventies
and a celebrated novelist, is the author of Atonement reminiscing
on the terrible consequences of her youthful mistake. Atonement,
McEwan's first novel since the Booker-winning Amsterdam, is an
extraordinary achievement and possibly the finest work he has yet
published. It is a engrossing book, full of narrative suspense and
wonderfully defined characters. It is also a consciously literary
novel, with allusions to Jane Austen, Elizabeth Bowen and Henry
James, but with none of the ponderous self-importance that label
often suggests. Atonement confirms McEwan's great talents and well
deserves its place on the Booker shortlist. (Kirkus UK)
On the hottest day of the summer of 1934, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis sees her sister Cecilia strip off her clothes and plunge into the fountain in the garden of their country hosue. Watching her is Robbie Turner, her childhood friend who, like Cecilia, has recently come down from Cambridge. By the end of that day, the lives of all three will have been changed for ever. Robbie and Cecilia will have crossed a boundary they had not even imagined at its start, and will have become victims of the younger girl's imagination.
Briony will have witnessed mysteries, and committed a crime for which she will spend the rest of her life trying to atone.
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