Atonement
by Ian McEwan
List Price:
Our Price: $0.01
You Save: $14.94 (100%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Ian McEwanEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-11-06
ISBN: 0307387151
Number of pages: 368
Publisher: Anchor
Book Reviews of Atonement
Book Review: Nothing extra-ordinary
Summary: 3 Stars
Let me first be clear about this book. There are good books that become popular and there are badly written ones that sometimes become popular. This book tends to fall somewhere in the middle. I'll not go into too much details of the story.
Briony a thirteen year old girl who fantasizes and desires to be a great writer has an elder sister Cecilia. Her house is a mansion on a big estate. Her father stays away on business and elder brother Leon just returns with his friend Paul Marshall. Author describes the estate in great detail but I failed to `see' it.
The char woman's son Robbie had been looked after by Briony's father and had been Cecilia's friend. Briony watches Cecilia's encounter with Robbie where she emerges wet out of a fountain.
Then Robbie happens to make a mistake and hands over the letter with wrong (ugly) words to Briony to give it to Cecilia. Here, the motivation of the character is a problem. I couldn't understand why he at all did it. The explanation that he wanted to prepare a ground for the party at night felt a little flimsy -contrived.
Briony at her age 13 is jealous of Cecilia and Robbie's closeness.
At dinner time the twin cousins disappear and everybody is out searching for them. While the search party breaks into groups only 13 year old Briony is left alone. A coincidence again? But it was essential to leave her alone because she was the one to see in near total darkness a man molesting her cousin Lola. So another teenager was left in the dark alone for molestation to occur.
Briony never really saw who molested Lola but assumes he was Robbie and becomes the star witness when cops investigate. By the way cops never visit the scene of crime to see how dark it was there.
Cops don't take Robbie to any doctor to perform a physical examination. Instead of going to medical college he goes to jail and then he is a soldier in retreat in world war two.
I loved the graphic description of violence in WW2 but all of us have read and seen WW2 violence in movies so often that it feels like a cliché (except shooting of the horses). In the next section again we read about the hardship Briony has to go through her training as a nurse. But going through the rigors of training to become a nurse could hardly be called a torture of penance. Again, there are so many details that don't seem important to the story. For example, though Briony talking to a dying French soldier is very touching it doesn't do anything for the story. The whole description of what Briony sees on the road when she is walking to meet Cecilia is a lot but it achieves nothing.
On occasion the descriptions of war and rigors of nursing feel like a documentary - a nicely written documentary. Briony's repentance never feels real.
If I focus my attention to the three pillars of fiction - setting, character and the story, I feel the author has done very good job at setting but failed to keep the balance with the other two -65% on setting, 20 % on character and 15 % on story.
Characterization is mediocre and Briony feels like a two dimensional character.
The story is a collection of far fetched coincidences. I was intrigued by the ending. Basically writer wanted to end the book with a tragedy, had second thoughts, so turns it into happy ending, then had third thoughts and so turns it into a tragedy.
And come on. A girl marries her rapist because he is moneyed. Who is going to buy that.
Ian McEwan is good at language. His language flows smoothly. But page after page of a narrative, with very little dialog, made a daunting task to finish the book.Some paragraphs are more than half a page - not acceptable by most editors in this era. I planned to read it in one week but it took three weeks. And I had a lot of time at hand.
Summary of Atonement
On a summer day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses a moment?s flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant. But Briony?s incomplete grasp of adult motives and her precocious imagination bring about a crime that will change all their lives, a crime whose repercussions Atonement follows through the chaos and carnage of World War II and into the close of the twentieth century.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
Historical Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Historical Books
Pirate Latitudes: A Novelby Michael Crichton
Harper; Published: 2009-11-24; Roughcut; Book
Best price: $2.44
Price in other shops:
The Master Butchers Singing Club: A Novelby Louise Erdrich
Harper Perennial; Published: 2004-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.83
Price in other shops:
The Last Witchfinder: A Novelby James Morrow
William Morrow; Published: 2006-03-14; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $4.00
Price in other shops:
Zorroby Isabel Allende
HarperAudio; Published: 2005-05-03; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $3.09
Price in other shops:
The Hot Kid: A Novelby Elmore Leonard
William Morrow; Published: 2005-05-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $2.89
Price in other shops:
The Last Kingdom (The Saxon Chronicles Series #1)Mass Market Paperback; Book
Bones of the Hills (Conqueror, Book 3)by Conn Iggulden
Harper Collins Canada; Published: 2008; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $44.70
Marchby Geraldine Brooks
Penguin Books; Published: 2006; Paperback; Book
Emperor (Emperor 1)by Conn Iggulden
Harpercollins Pb; Published: 2003-06-07; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.80
Girl With a Pearl Earringby Tracy Chevalier
Harper Collins Audio; Published: 2002-06-17; Audio Cassette; Book
Best price: $86.82
Similar Books and other products
Life of Piby Yann Martel
Mariner Books; Published: 2003-05-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.76
Price in other shops:
The English Patientby Michael Ondaatje
Vintage Books; Published: 1993-11-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.99
Price in other shops:
Translations: A Play (Faber Paperbacks)by Brian Friel
Faber & Faber; Published: 1995-03-16; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.62
Price in other shops:
The French Lieutenant's Womanby John Fowles
Back Bay Books; Published: 1998-09-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.97
Price in other shops:
The Shadow Lines: A Novelby Amitav Ghosh
Mariner Books; Published: 2005-05-03; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.00
Price in other shops:
The End of the Affair (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)by Graham Greene
Penguin Classics; Published: 2004-08-31; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.34
Price in other shops:
The Golden Notebook: A Novel (P.S.)by Doris Lessing
Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Published: 2008-10-14; Paperback; Book
Best price: $10.76
Price in other shops:
White Teeth: A Novelby Zadie Smith
Vintage; Published: 2001-06-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.00
Price in other shops:
Never Let Me Goby Kazuo Ishiguro
Vintage; Published: 2006-03-14; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.49
Price in other shops:
The Remains of the Dayby Kazuo Ishiguro
Vintage; Published: 1990-09-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.25
Price in other shops: