Atonement | Ian McEwan | My favorite book... ever.

Atonement | Ian McEwan | A Writer Learns About Life

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Atonement

	Atonement Ian McEwan Anchor, 2007 - 496 pages average customer review:based on 767 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

My favorite book... ever.

I first picked this book up about 6 or 7 years ago, read it over the course of 4 nights and immediately read it all over again. I laughed. I cried. I got excited/scared/happy/hopeful/devastated/etc. as the story went.

My favorite thing about Atonement is that the story is one I have never read before. It's so refreshing after reading hundreds of books I find that so many follow the same base plots, and while they can still be good, this book transcended any I had read before, and any I have read after.

My hands-down favorite. I've read it 4 times now as well as anything else by Ian McEwan I could find.

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A Writer Learns About Life

There are so many reviews of this book already that I am loathe to add more redundant verbiage to the pile. So I'll just say that this is my third Ian McEwan novel (having read "On Chesil Beach" and "Saturday" before I read this one), and I must say that he is now one of my favorite writers. This book functions on so many levels and in the end is really as much about the craft of writing as anything else. We first meet Briony, who is really the protagonist, as a young adolescent, and we see into her young mind and heart, and understand, before she does, the disaster that her overactive imagination will cause in the lives of her friends and family. She is precocious and thoughtful, but she is young and fails to understand that she is wrong, in so many ways, about what she sees before her own eyes. Her emotions and her imagination get the better of her and although she ultimately realizes the mistake she made and seeks atonement for it, she has nonetheless changed forever the lives of her Cecilia, her sister, and of Robbie, the young man with a promising future whose mother works for the Tallis family. Ironically, though, it is her imagination that will serve her well as a novelist. The book flows through personal lives, society, as well as world history and moves from mid-20th century to the end of the century. A good deal of ground to cover, but McEwan does it well, I think. The characters are interesting and real and the story is compelling.

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Loved it!

I almost gave this novel 4 stars, because there was a point at the near-end where I didn't like where the author was going. But in the last pages, he redeemed himself, and I see why it *had* to be told the way it was.

That being said, I loved Atonement. It is one of the best books I've read in years. Robbie and Cecilia's fiery love made me catch my breath, and I know this is a book that will leave me thinking for days.

So-So

Yes, Ian McEwan writes beautifully. Yes, I actully liked the last section of the novel where as a reader, I understood more about Briony. But the novel felt sluggish, and the characters seemed shallow. I just never connected, which was a disappointment. It seemed on the surface to have all of the elements I usually enjoy.

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