My review of Atonement, by Ian McEwan

Atonement

by Ian McEwan 

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars

This historical family saga is one of my favourite literary works, which surprises me as it was written not in antiquity with my other all-time favourites, but in 2001. My introduction was director Joe Wright's 2007 BAFTA and Academy Award nominated movie, starring James McAvoy and Keira Knightley. Then when I read the book, Ian McEwan's pros had me glued. 

The stylistic element is the strongest hook. Had it been told less masterfully, this tale may have had little more going for it than its sweeping timespan and those popular mid twentieth century historical landmarks that just tickle the outermost reaches of living memory. The beautifully structured story divides cleanly into three parts: 1935 England; World War II England and France; then modern-day England.

It begins on a sweltering summer day in 1935, when thirteen-year-old aspiring writer Briony Tallis, at her wealthy family's grand country estate, makes a clumsy and naïve error of judgement which will ruin lives:

Having received her maternal cousins, twins Jackson and Pierrot and their older sister Lola, as summer houseguests, Briony writes a play for the four youngsters to perform at a family gathering. But her three cousins have come from an unsettled home, with their parents expected to separate.

In the oppressive heat, Briony becomes exasperated motivating her disorientated cousins into order for the play. Unable to push them to her standards, Briony seeks solace in an upstairs bedroom, from where she witnesses through a window what looks like an altercation, down below at the front garden fountain.

Her older sister Cecilia, home from Cambridge University, is involved in a flirtatious tiff with childhood friend Robbie Turner. Son of the Tallis family housekeeper and nowadays Cecelia's fellow Cambridge student, Robbie is also home on leave. Briony misconstrues the scene, concluding that Robbie is being aggressive to Cecilia. 

Back at his home Robbie writes several drafts of a love letter to Cecelia, handing a copy to little Briony, outdoors, to deliver. As Briony skips away with it, Robbie realises he has accidentally given her the wrong draft, one he had meant to discard, containing obscenities. En route home with Cecelia's letter, Briony opens and reads it, becoming shocked and perplexed as to Robbie's intentions.

Later at home, Briony walks in on Robbie and Cecilia making love in a quiet corner of the family library. Having come to think Robbie a 'maniac', Briony misinterprets their lovemaking as rape and feels protective towards Cecelia, who is saying nothing.

A dinner party is held to welcome home Briony and Cecelia's older brother Leon, who brings along his wealthy friend Paul Marshall. During this, young twins Jackson and Pierrot are discovered to have run away, possibly in fear of being forced to appear in Briony's play, possibly in distress over their own uncertain domestic situation. The party forms a posse, searching the darkened grounds for the boys. Briony happens upon her older cousin, Lola, apparently being raped by a man whose identity is veiled in shadow. 

Back at the house everyone fusses over a shocked and bedraggled Lola, who seems unable or reluctant to identify her assailant. The twins are still missing. Briony takes it on herself to speak out, accusing Robbie Turner of the awful deed. Robbie is still outdoors, possibly afraid to return and hand himself in, maybe awaiting his next victim. The police are called and Briony identifies Robbie to them as the rapist. She claims to have recognised his face in the dark. Having eventually found the missing twins himself, Robbie then arrives back at the house as day breaks. He is arrested, charged and jailed for Lola's rape, with only Cecilia and Robbie's mother believing his protestations of innocence.

The story jumps to World War II, after Robbie has served some years in jail. He is released for army enlistment, to fight in the war. Cecilia has left home and trained as a nurse, severing contact with her family for allowing Robbie to go to jail. Robbie and Cecilia have only maintained contact by mail, since she was earlier forbidden from visiting him in jail. But before Robbie is sent to France, the couple meet once briefly during Cecilia's lunch break, sharing a kiss before separating.

In France, the army retreats to Dunkirk. Badly injured, Robbie seeks out shelter. There he thinks about Cecilia and reflects on past events, still puzzling over possible reasons for Briony accusing him. The memory of his brief final meeting with Cecilia is all that keeps him going, his only aim being to see her again. He falls asleep in Dunkirk, the day before evacuation.

Back in England, remorseful eighteen-year-old Briony has refused her place at Cambridge, instead training for nursing in London, as if undertaking some self-imposed duty of penance. With the benefit of hindsight and maturity, she has realised the gravity of her terrible mistake five years ago. She now suspects it was Leon's friend, Paul Marshall, who she saw raping Lola. 

This suspicion is strengthened when Briony attends Lola's London wedding to Paul Marshall. After watching these twisted nuptials, Briony journeys to face Cecilia at her sparse rented flat near Balham, to make long overdue amends. Robbie is there, home on leave. As the couple refuse Briony their forgiveness, she insists on trying to make amends by initiating legal proceedings to exonerate Robbie. Briony offers to change her original statement (even though Paul Marshall will never be held responsible for his crime because of his marriage to Lola, the victim). However, the couple point out that Briony would be seen as an unreliable witness, if suddenly admitting her own lies. 

In London 1999, we read seventy-seven-year-old Briony Tallis, a successful novelist with terminal dementia, tell us her dying truths. She has penned an acclaimed novel (the book-within-a-book we've read in parts one and two of this novel) in which Cecilia and Robbie are reunited after Dunkirk. In reality, however, they never met again, as Briony here humbly acknowledges.

Old Briony concedes that Robbie most likely died at Dunkirk, from septicaemia caused by his injuries. Cecilia was probably killed by a bomb that destroyed gas and water mains above Balham tube station. Whilst Briony's plotline of Lola's wedding to Paul Marshall was true, Briony had not, in reality, visited Cecilia at her rented flat near Balham to make amends. Such is often an author's purpose in fiction - to imaginarily undo wrongdoings. To atone themselves of something they otherwise cannot. 

Briony justifies her rewriting of history in reuniting Cecilia and Robbie, claiming she saw no point offering her readers a pitiless ending. No sense or satisfaction, she rationalises, could be drawn from that. She also wanted to give Robbie and Cecilia their due happiness by bringing them together. Since they could not reunite in life, Briony permitted them this in her fiction.

By tracking older Briony's life journey, the reader has examined the human need for personal atonement.

This had the makings of an instant classic, with all the qualities of so many great epics yet the intimacy of those deeply personal works we curl up with on cold winter nights. It is no wonder it sold so well, was shortlisted for the 2001 Booker Prize for fiction and listed in 2010 by TIME magazine as of the 100 greatest English-language novels since 1923.

Impossible to predict where the story is taking you, yet utterly compelling, this is a haunting mystery but so much more. One of those rare, special novels that will likely never date, which everyone should read at least once.