Review: Atonement by Ian McEwan

a·tone·ment

əˈtōnmənt

noun

1. reparation for a wrong or injury.

Despite Ian McEwan’s prominence as a novelist in the British literature sphere, this is the only work of his I have read. It was my first, but certainly will not be my last. McEwan is an incredible writer, describing the everyday lives of family members as they reconvene for the summer at their countryside home with complex introspection of each character. The smooth build-up of seemingly harmless but insidiously devolving events does a remarkable job of showing, not telling, the motives behind Briony’s climactic claim one evening that changes the lives of the family members forever. And though I found the duplicity of Briony somewhat too complex for a child, McEwan convincingly portrayed her deception to be a result of the hyperbolic possibilities of childhood imagination.

The book is divided into three parts, the first, leading up to the pivotal crisis, the second, scene through the eyes of Robbie Turner as a soldier in World War II, the third, Briony again as a nurse taking care of soldiers wounded from the War. The Postscript is like an epilogue, depicting Briony at her oldest and as matriarch of the Tallis family during a family reunion, where many of the family members present in the first part of the book are now deceased and mentioned only in Briony’s memories. The first part was by far the most powerful one, and I found the second and third a little more difficult to get through and even pandering to the reader audience at times. The beginning, though, is a wonderful narrative about family chaos accumulating to a point of irrevocable disaster. The second part details warfare, and I thought McEwan proved weak on this front especially in comparison to the first part. The third part, and this is when I mean pandering, reunites lovers in what I thought was an obligatory manner and just didn’t give me the closure I was hoping between the parties involved. The postscript was, however, a return to the potency of the work seen in part I. Here is where we finally achieve atonement, though perhaps in an unconventional yet satisfying way. Though the narrative concluded in an unanticipated way, I am not shocked by the ending. I’m left with feelings of both satisfaction and emptiness. I’m left with gladness and sorrow. I’m left with an ending that was not made to pander to audiences, but was not made to aggravate them either. I am left realizing that atonement is incapable of complete absolution, but nevertheless is a compelling force for self-justification.

Rating: 4.5