Atonement – Ian McEwan
On a hot summer day in 1935, at the Tallis family’s country house in England, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis is writing a play to celebrate her brother’s return home. Imaginative and eager to be taken seriously as a writer, she witnesses a series of moments between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of the family’s housekeeper, whose education at Cambridge was paid for by Briony’s father. Briony misunderstands what she sees.
That night, when a crime is committed on the estate, Briony makes an accusation that will change the lives of everyone involved. Robbie, who has just realized his love for Cecilia and she for him, is arrested and imprisoned.
Atonement, by Ian McEwan, follows the consequences of that terrible error over the following years. The second part of the novel moves to 1940, as Robbie, released from prison to join the army, struggles through the chaos of the British retreat to Dunkirk. The third part follows Briony, now eighteen, who has given up a place at Cambridge to train as a nurse in a London hospital, caring for wounded soldiers while trying to find a way to make amends for what she did.
The novel’s final section, set decades later, offers a stunning revelation that forces readers to reconsider everything that came before and raises profound questions about storytelling, guilt and forgiveness.
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize and adapted into an acclaimed film, Atonement is a masterpiece of modern literary fiction. It contains wartime violence, sexual assault and mature themes.
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