Looking Back - Atonement

Looking Back... In an effort to transfer my book journal entries over to this blog, I'm going to attempt to post (in chronological order) an entry every Friday. I may or may not add extra commentary to what I jotted down in these journals.

Atonement by Ian McEwan

Fiction

2002

Finished on March 30, 2002

Rating: 5/5 (Brilliant!)

Publisher's Blurb:

On the hottest day of the summer of 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis sees her older sister Cecilia strip off her clothes and plunge into the fountain in the garden of their country house. Watching Cecilia is their housekeeper’s son Robbie Turner, a childhood friend who, along with Briony’s sister, has recently graduated from Cambridge.

By the end of that day the lives of all three will have been changed forever. Robbie and Cecilia will have crossed a boundary they had not dared to approach and will have become victims of the younger girl’s scheming imagination. And Briony will have committed a dreadful crime, the guilt for which will color her entire life.

In each of his novels Ian McEwan has brilliantly drawn his reader into the intimate lives and situations of his characters; but never before has he worked with so large a canvas. Atonement is Ian McEwan’s finest achievement. Brilliant and utterly enthralling in its depiction of childhood, love and war, England and class, Atonement is at its center a profound—and profoundly moving—exploration of shame and forgiveness, and the difficulty of absolution.

My Original Thoughts (2002):

First encounter with McEwan's works. Took a few chapters to get interested, but then I couldn't put it down. Beautiful, rich language. Use of color and light reminiscent of Willa Cather's prose. Witty. (13-year-old Briony's attempt to broaden her vocabulary in both her written and spoken word.) Alternating POVs reveal conflicting perspectives of a single event. Engrossing, touching, memorable characters. As the final chapter drew near, I slowed my pace, trying to savor each sentence. Was even able to stay fully immersed while on a flight to & from Nebraska. Set in 1935 England. A young girl's scheming imagination wreaks havoc on a family. Moves forward to Dunkirk 1941, then on to a reunion in 1999. Somewhat autobiographical in the references to writing?

My Current Thoughts:

I re-read Atonement in 2019 (reviewed here). Below is an excerpt from that review:

I received an ARC months before its publication date and was so excited to tell everyone about this wonderful book when it was finally released. I gave it a 5-star rating and it was my number one read of the year. I've had it on my shelf for 18 years, always hoping to make time to read it a second time, so after chatting with some friends about the books we've read and loved that others loathed, I decided the time had come. I had to see what I might had missed and why so many readers disliked this novel as much as they did.

It may come as a shock to many, but I am now one of those readers and it makes me sad to be so disappointed with a book after feeling so strongly about it for all those years. But it was all I could do to finish reading it and had I not previously read and loved it, I might have given up by the 50 page mark. Unlike my first reading, I did not find the story at all compelling or intense, but rather, I was bored with McEwan’s wordiness and impatient with the characters.

2019 Rating: 2/5 (Fair)