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Summary and Reviews of Atonement by Ian McEwan

Atonement by Ian McEwan

Atonement

by Ian McEwan
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (5):
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  • First Published:
  • Mar 1, 2002, 448 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Feb 2003, 448 pages
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About This Book

Book Summary

Brilliant and utterly enthralling in its depiction of childhood, love and war, England and class. At its center this is a profound–and profoundly moving–exploration of shame, forgiveness and the difficulty of absolution.

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.

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  • award image

    National Book Critics Circle Awards
    2002

Reviews

BookBrowse Review

BookBrowse

The strength of Atonement is in both the plot and the imagery McEwan conjures up. It is a book to absorb slowly and well worth the time to do so. The middle section, set during the evacuation of the British troops from France (via Dunkirk) in 1940, is particularly good.

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