Published 2001 / Length 388 pages
Atonement is a three-part novel, which begins in the country house of the slightly arriviste upper-middle-class Tallis family in 1935. When Briony Tallis, a fanciful, highly imaginative thirteen-year-old, observes her elder sister Cecilia strip and dive into a fountain in front of Robbie Turner, the charlady’s son, she mistakenly believes that Cecilia has been forced to perform to satisfy Robbie’s lust. This assumption, together with further misconceptions by Briony, lead to disastrous, haunting consequences that shape the rest of the novel. Part two of the book concentrates in graphic detail on Robbie’s involvement in the Dunkirk evacuation, perhaps affording a sense of perspective on one foolish child’s actions in the context of many atrocities. Part three recounts Briony’s career as a nurse in war-ravaged London, dealing with the terrible casualties of battle and facing up to the dreadful repercussions of her childhood errors. McEwan’s mastery of the narrative voice, moving from that of a 1930s novel at the start of the book to a modernist, almost stream-of-consciousness style at the end, is a literary tour de force, as well as being a profound meditation on the nature of art, forgiveness, and whether atonement is ever truly possible.
‘Reassuringly, even as [Atonement] plays postmodern games, it continues to explore many of McEwan’s customary interests: the collision between childish whimsy and adult authority, the tyranny of libido, and the conflict between masculine and feminine perspectives… More than ever before, the author is intrigued with the machinery of myth-making, and with the power of narrative to create and manipulate truth.’ – Financial Times
• On a structural level, the novel is a fascinating exploration of the concept of an unreliable narrator. The book is initially written in the third person, but then shifts to the first as Briony confesses her deception to the reader. What can we, the reader, believe?
• Misconceptions and lies, forms of fiction in themselves, generate the book’s central turning points. What does the novel have to say about the act of creating and writing fictions?
• The novel poses a powerful moral question: does Briony’s devotion to the victims of war go some way to atoning for her earlier actions? Can the creation of the work of art we are reading also contribute to this atonement?
• Atonement was nominated for the 2001 Booker Prize, which McEwan had previously won in 1998 with his novel Amsterdam.
• The French Lieutenant’s Woman by JOHN FOWLES – another time-slipping narrative.
• A Passage to India by E. M. FORSTER – an Edwardian novel in which one man’s fate turns on the unreliable testimony of a woman, as she alleges sexual impropriety.
• What Maisie Knew by HENRY JAMES – an account of divorce within a dysfunctional family, narrated through the eyes of a precocious child, who ages, and whose perspective on events matures, as the novel progresses.