Atonement
1 journaler for this copy...
"On the hottest day of the summer of 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis sees her sister Cecilia strip off her clothes and plunge into the fountain in the garden of their country house. 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."
---SPOILER ALERT---
My rating of 9 is a tribute to McEwan's writing, which is able to turn a rather simple storyline into an interesting reading. At the end I felt a bit betrayed with the fact that the book is more a literary experience than a "normal" story... but it still was an enjoyable reading.
The book is divided in 4 parts.
In the first part the author puts us in the mind of different characters: Briony, her sister Cecilia, their mother Emily and the "hero" Robbie Turner. Thus we LIVE the same events (of one and a half days in the summer of 1935) under their different perspectives and motivations.
The second part takes us to an ambience of war, during the british withdrawal from France, through Dunkirk, in June 1940. Here we don't have the multiplicity of views of the first part, we only accompany Robbie Turner but in a very realistic way, feeling his desperation to arrive at Dunkirk, and back to England and Cecilia, safe and sound, his amazement at the scenes going on around him, and his struggle to leave everything behind.
The third part takes us to Briony, also in 1940, as she prepares to become a nurse, deals with the events of 5 years ago, and has the first contact with the wounded soldiers that arrive from France. At the end of this part, Briony visits her sister, finds her living with Robbie, and agrees to tell everyone what really happened back in 1935.
In the last part of the book, 60 years have passed, and, as we accompany the old Briony in her seventy seventh birthday, we realize that everything we have been reading is in fact her own account of the events. We also learn that the meeting with her sister and Robbie, described in part 3, never took place, as they both died in that year of 1940 without ever fulfilling their love...
I'm ok with this--the fact that the reunion of the two lovers was the only way Briony could find to make amends (atone) for the events that she had set in motion: as within some generations the Cecilia and Robbie characters would only exist in her book it was a way of giving their story the happy-ending they deserved.
What I felt a bit betrayed about was the fact that all the personal accounts of part 1 and 2 turned out to be told by one of the characters, which could not possibly know what the others were thinking or feeling... I know it hardly matters because anyway the story itself is fictional, but the fact that the voice of the narrative does not belong to an independent and omniscient narrator takes away all the magic that McEwan had achieved, by transporting us to the world of the book, and making us see and feel and suffer and love with each character...
My rating of 9 is a tribute to McEwan's writing, which is able to turn a rather simple storyline into an interesting reading. At the end I felt a bit betrayed with the fact that the book is more a literary experience than a "normal" story... but it still was an enjoyable reading.
The book is divided in 4 parts.
In the first part the author puts us in the mind of different characters: Briony, her sister Cecilia, their mother Emily and the "hero" Robbie Turner. Thus we LIVE the same events (of one and a half days in the summer of 1935) under their different perspectives and motivations.
The second part takes us to an ambience of war, during the british withdrawal from France, through Dunkirk, in June 1940. Here we don't have the multiplicity of views of the first part, we only accompany Robbie Turner but in a very realistic way, feeling his desperation to arrive at Dunkirk, and back to England and Cecilia, safe and sound, his amazement at the scenes going on around him, and his struggle to leave everything behind.
The third part takes us to Briony, also in 1940, as she prepares to become a nurse, deals with the events of 5 years ago, and has the first contact with the wounded soldiers that arrive from France. At the end of this part, Briony visits her sister, finds her living with Robbie, and agrees to tell everyone what really happened back in 1935.
In the last part of the book, 60 years have passed, and, as we accompany the old Briony in her seventy seventh birthday, we realize that everything we have been reading is in fact her own account of the events. We also learn that the meeting with her sister and Robbie, described in part 3, never took place, as they both died in that year of 1940 without ever fulfilling their love...
I'm ok with this--the fact that the reunion of the two lovers was the only way Briony could find to make amends (atone) for the events that she had set in motion: as within some generations the Cecilia and Robbie characters would only exist in her book it was a way of giving their story the happy-ending they deserved.
What I felt a bit betrayed about was the fact that all the personal accounts of part 1 and 2 turned out to be told by one of the characters, which could not possibly know what the others were thinking or feeling... I know it hardly matters because anyway the story itself is fictional, but the fact that the voice of the narrative does not belong to an independent and omniscient narrator takes away all the magic that McEwan had achieved, by transporting us to the world of the book, and making us see and feel and suffer and love with each character...
