Atonement

Atonement
by Ian McEwan

Atonement
Our Price: $97.18
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $1.11 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions


or

Book Summary Information

Author: Ian McEwan
Edition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-01
ISBN: 1419336916
Publisher: Recorded Books

Book Reviews of Atonement

Book Review: Tour de force (Really!)
Summary: 5 Stars

I often read on back covers that a book is a tour de force, but this is the first time I've really thought it myself! Even if you've seen the movie, which is quite good, the book offers so much more. McEwan delves deeply and honestly into the thoughts of each of his characters creating a a masterful interplay of perspectives. The account of Briony's stream of consciousness transported me back to age 13. I think that McEwan embodies his charcters so completely that he includes all the quirky patterns of thought that hardly anyone speaks aloud or writes about, but everyone must experience.
The narrator has a lovely, rich voice with a British accent and gives different characters slightly unique inflection and pacing, but not distractingly so. I listened to this on a long road trip and the miles just flew by as I was so riveted.

Summary of Atonement

On the hottest day of the summer of 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis sees her older sister Cecilia strip off her clothes and plunge into the fountain in the garden of their country house. Watching Cecilia is their housekeeper?s son Robbie Turner, a childhood friend who, along with Briony?s sister, has recently graduated from Cambridge.

By the end of that day the lives of all three will have been changed forever. Robbie and Cecilia will have crossed a boundary they had never before dared to approach and will have become victims of the younger girl?s scheming imagination. And Briony will have committed a dreadful crime, the guilt for which will color her entire life.

In each of his novels Ian McEwan has brilliantly drawn his reader into the intimate lives and situations of his characters. But never before has he worked with so large a canvas: In Atonement he takes the reader from a manor house in England in 1935 to the retreat from Dunkirk in 1941; from the London?s World War II military hospitals to a reunion of the Tallis clan in 1999.

Atonement is Ian McEwan?s finest achievement. Brilliant and utterly enthralling in its depiction of childhood, love and war, England and class, the novel is at its center a profound?and profoundly moving?exploration of shame and forgiveness and the difficulty of absolution.
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
Most talked about in Historical Books
Pirate Latitudes: A Novel ImagePirate Latitudes: A Novel
by Michael Crichton
Harper; Published: 2009-11-24; Roughcut; Book
Best price: $2.44
Price in other shops: $27.99
The Master Butchers Singing Club: A Novel ImageThe Master Butchers Singing Club: A Novel
by Louise Erdrich
Harper Perennial; Published: 2004-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.83
Price in other shops: $13.95
The Last Witchfinder: A Novel ImageThe Last Witchfinder: A Novel
by James Morrow
William Morrow; Published: 2006-03-14; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $4.00
Price in other shops: $25.95
Zorro ImageZorro
by Isabel Allende
HarperAudio; Published: 2005-05-03; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $3.09
Price in other shops: $39.95
The Hot Kid: A Novel ImageThe Hot Kid: A Novel
by Elmore Leonard
William Morrow; Published: 2005-05-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $2.89
Price in other shops: $25.95
The Last Kingdom (The Saxon Chronicles Series #1) ImageThe Last Kingdom (The Saxon Chronicles Series #1)
Mass Market Paperback; Book
Bones of the Hills (Conqueror, Book 3) ImageBones of the Hills (Conqueror, Book 3)
by Conn Iggulden
Harper Collins Canada; Published: 2008; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $44.70
March ImageMarch
by Geraldine Brooks
Penguin Books; Published: 2006; Paperback; Book
Emperor (Emperor 1) ImageEmperor (Emperor 1)
by Conn Iggulden
Harpercollins Pb; Published: 2003-06-07; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.80
Girl With a Pearl Earring ImageGirl With a Pearl Earring
by Tracy Chevalier
Harper Collins Audio; Published: 2002-06-17; Audio Cassette; Book
Best price: $86.82
Similar Books and other products
The Kite Runner ImageThe Kite Runner
by Khaled Hosseini
Simon & Schuster Audio; Published: 2005-02-07; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $14.82
Price in other shops: $39.95
Cutting for Stone: A Novel ImageCutting for Stone: A Novel
by Abraham Verghese
Random House Audio; Published: 2009-02-03; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $26.21
Price in other shops: $44.95
Solar ImageSolar
by Ian McEwan
Recorded Books, LLC; Published: 2010-04-15; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $19.07
Price in other shops: $34.99
Enduring Love ImageEnduring Love
by Jan McEwan
Borders/Recorded Books Unabridged; Published: 1998; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $24.95
Room: A Novel ImageRoom: A Novel
by Emma Donoghue
Hachette Audio; Published: 2010-09-13; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $5.24
Price in other shops: $29.98
Brideshead Revisited ImageBrideshead Revisited
by Evelyn Waugh
AudioGO Ltd.; Published: 2010-07-13; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $25.26
Price in other shops: $39.95
Saturday ImageSaturday
by Ian McEwan
Recorded Books; Published: 2005-03; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $67.95
On Chesil Beach ImageOn Chesil Beach
by Ian McEwan
Random House Audio; Published: 2007-06-05; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $19.94
Price in other shops: $29.95
Atonement: A Novel ImageAtonement: A Novel
by Ian McEwan
Anchor; Published: 2003-02-25; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.98
Price in other shops: $15.00
Atonement ImageAtonement
Release date: 2009-10-01; Amazon Instant Video; Movie
Best price: $2.99