ATONEMENT, which Ian McEwan has called his "Jane Austen novel," is divided into three sections, reaching from the first chapter, set in 1935, to a startling coda in the early 2000s. In between is wartime Europe and a group of nurses tending to wounded soldiers; this section also describes the aftermath of the battle of Dunkirk, in which McEwan's father fought. (McEwan gives his father, who died just before ATONEMENT was published, a walk-on part.) The story revolves around a disastrous misunderstanding by a young teenage girl, which leads to a tragic series of events that culminate in a stunning surprise ending. ATONEMENT was short-listed for the 2001 Booker Prize. A New York Times "Editor's Choice" for 2002.
critical reviews
"[T]here is nothing self-conscious or mannered about Mr. McEwan's writing. Indeed, ATONEMENT emerges as the author's most deeply felt novel yet--a novel that takes the glittering narrative pyrotechnics perfected in his last book, AMSTERDAM, and employs them in the service of a larger, tragic vision. It is a novel that attests not only to Mr. McEwan's mastery of craft and virtuosic control of narrative suspense, but also to his knowledge of the human heart and its rage for symmetry and order." - John R. Oneal (New York Times, 3/7/02)
"As well as being a superb writer of place, McEwan is also among the finest practitioners of the free indirect style in English, and each phrase in ATONEMENT vibrates with the voice of the character it is so discreetly ventriloquizing....The dust jacket proclaims ATONEMENT his finest achievement, and although publishers are prone to this...view of their authors' talents, in this case they are triumphantly right." - Nicholas Holmes (Times Literary Supplement, 9/28/01)
"Reading McEwan's work, we often find it impossible to slow down, so powerful is the pull of 'What's next?' In ATONEMENT that pull lures us through the first section at breakneck speed, and reasserts its sway in the last. But in the second and third segments of the book a strange and fine thing happens: we are free to linger in the moment, to savor the exquisite, agonizing aptness of McEwan's images and the delicacy of his touch as he records, in fiction, the true horrors of war, and makes new the ordinary realizations those horrors force upon us...." - Alan H. Friedman (Atlantic Monthly, 3/1/02)
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"This book was so boring!! I love reading, and feel I can get through and appreciate anything; but this one was just to long, dry, and overly descriptive. I don't usually say this, but just watch the movie. It goes along the same lines and is much shorter and more entertaining."
"This book took me awhile to really get into, and moves a bit slowly at times, but was worth the effort. It is a really great story. Heartbreaking and beautiful. Looking back on the book as a whole after finishing it made me really appreciate it in its entirety."
"From the first sentence to the last, "Atonement" will remain one of my top five favorite novels of all time. The flow of the story is such that the reader is simply swept into the lives of these characters and doesn't even realize until the end what has really happened, whose story it really is. Make room for this on your bookshelf.
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