Book Review: 'Atonement' - Ian McEwan

Atonement (n.): amends or reparation made for an injury or wrong. The title of the book tells me that there is a huge crime to be committed but only possible redemption. I was fascinated before I even opened the cover because there are so many sins in the world and so few ways to atone for them: which sin would the author (Ian McEwan) choose and how would he make it original? The crime does not sound original: young Briony Tallis (through a series of misunderstandings) convicts Robbie Turner of rape he did not commit and sends an innocent man to jail. But the originality is very much present in the way the story is written, in the colourful descriptions, the small details and the wonderful contrast of different writing eras in the novel’s four parts.

The story starts with Briony Tallis as she prepares to surprise her returning brother with a self-written play. She witnesses a series of encounters between her sister, Cecelia, and their landlady’s son, Robbie Turner. The encounters are sexually charged. Briony cannot fathom why the two act as they do, being too young to understand matters of love beyond her carefully constructed ideals (“A good wedding was an unacknowledged representation of the as yet unthinkable—sexual bliss. In the aisles of country churches and grand city cathedrals, witnessed by a whole society of approving family and friends, her heroines and heroes reached their innocent climaxes and needed to go no further.”).

In fact, it is stated that Briony exists in a “self-contained world” (as is evident by the meticulous way she tidies her room - “Whereas her big sister’s room was a stew of unclosed books, unfolded clothes, unmade bed, unemptied ashtrays, Briony’s was a shrine to her controlling demon…In fact, Briony’s was the only tidy upstairs room in the house”) in which she does not like to have her “natural order” upset. The encounters upset that natural order and her frustration causes her to attempt to control the situation with her own beliefs - thus coming to the conclusion that Robbie is a “sex maniac”. This assumption is what makes Briony so confident that he was the one that raped her cousin, Lola. Her confidence sends Robbie to jail with only Cecelia believing in him.

I found it fascinating how complex the writing style is from Briony’s young point-of-view but aptly describes her desire for precociousness, her longing for maturity and misconstrued ideas of adventure. This following extract shows Briony’s thoughts towards seeing an exchange between Cecelia and Robbie where the two argue before breaking a priceless vase (some pieces falling into the fountain). Cecelia responds by diving into the fountain to retrieve the pieces while Briony watches from a window, constructing her own storyline from the unfolding events.

“The sequence was illogical—the drowning scene, followed by a rescue, should have preceded the marriage proposal. Such was Briony’s last thought before she accepted that she did not understand, and that she must simply watch.”

It is clear from this extract that Briony has very detailed rules for romance and every other aspect of life. Her desire for maturity is marked by her wish for a secret of her own - one that other’s would really want to know (“Nothing in her life was sufficiently interesting or shameful to merit hiding; no one knew about the squirrel’s skull beneath her bed, but no one wanted to know”) as this would then induct her into her imagined world that adults inhabit where secrets are rife and mysteries plenty. These pleasant fancies (built up through clever use of language and character analysis) eventually culminate in disaster.

Atonement is written in four parts. Each of the four parts in written in a different tone and seems to capture the four main episodes of British literature writing style. In the first part when Leon (Briony and Cecelia’s brother) arrives up until Robbie’s arrest, an Austen’esque mood is employed with romantic descriptions (of Lola: “Their sister, who sat between them, with left leg balanced on right knee, was, by contrast, perfectly composed, having liberally applied perfume and changed into a green gingham frock to offset her coloring”). The light, airy mood (so reminiscent of Jane Austen) only sours at the end of Part One and signals the transition to the next part.

Part Two is from Robbie’s perspective. He had been released early from prison in exchange for serving in the army during World War II. This part shows use of Historical War Fiction. Gone are the poetic words; in its place is a hard, brutally honest portrayal of war’s devastation (“It was a leg in a tree. A mature plane tree, only just in leaf. The leg was twenty feet up, wedged in the first forking of the trunk, bare, severed cleanly above the knee. From where they stood there was no sign of blood or torn flesh. It was a perfect leg, pale, smooth, small enough to be a child’s. The way it was angled in the fork, it seemed to be on display, for their benefit or enlightenment: this is a leg”). The author introduces the roughness of a soldier’s life with swear words and unrefined manner of speech (“So, which way, guv’nor?”) that contrasts with Part One’s upper-class politeness. Robbie’s way of thinking has not much changed between the parts (thus remaining realistic) except become hardened and determined from his false conviction. It is more his surroundings that change the reader’s view of him: he seems much tougher when he is placed on a raging war field than when he is the landlady’s son at the Tallis mansion.

Next is Part Three, this time once more from Briony’s point-of-view. She seeks redemption, having grown older and “understanding the consequences” her previous actions inflicted. Instead of receiving a university education, she had left home to become a nurse. This part echoes Victorian times and takes the form of a memoir as Briony no longer indulges much in fanciful notions but more provides a day-to-day retelling of her life at the hospital during the war (“The doorbell did not work. She let the knocker fall twice and stood back. She heard a woman’s angry voice, then the slam of a door and the thud of footsteps. Briony took another pace back. It was not too late to retreat up the street”). Nursing is her penance for her crime as a child and she harbours the unrealistic hope that “how one of these men might be Robbie, how she would dress his wounds without knowing who he was, and with cotton wool tenderly rub his face until his familiar features emerged, and how he would turn to her with gratitude, realize who she was, and take her hand, and in silently squeezing it, forgive her”.

The last part is also in Briony’s perspective. It takes the tone of a more modern style of writing. The words are quite straightforward, only pausing to record small, significant details (“I’ve always liked to make a tidy finish”). Briony is old now and dying from vascular dementia. The part is relatively short, describing Briony traveling to her childhood mansion (now a hotel) where the handful of her living relatives throw her a birthday party. In the library, the younger generation (grand-nieces and nephews) perform the play that she wrote so long ago for her brother’s return. This closes the story on a wonderful note with the feeling that everything comes full circle in the end, no matter what life you’ve lived or what happened in it.

I was completely overwhelmed by this book. Its critical acclaim could not be more well-deserved. The author asks the question if there’s true atonement for any sin - there’s no way to reverse time, and in the end, even Briony seems to have shrugged off the cares that the reader can see in Parts One and Three in the face of her impending death. She’s lived her life and is happy to quietly go to let others live theirs instead of constantly thinking of herself and her world and searching for the spotlight. Ian McEwan has taken us on the journey of Briony’s life, from her secure childhood to old age.

I especially admired his use of different tones for the different parts. It was very well done and the author most definitely required significant skill to create different writing styles that seemed so realistic and believable in all. The character of Briony Tallis intrigues me, because she is such a flawed character. She commits her crime, seeks redemption, and then concedes to fate before we’re even sure that she’s found atonement. And although the book’s title is Atonement, I find myself wondering if this book does not want to talk about atoning for a sin, but rather living out a life in spite of it.

 - Calista


"A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended." - Atonement