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3.92 AVERAGE
3.92 AVERAGE
why are memories always so beautiful?
reread and annotated this book as a gift to a friend who requested tragic love stories; this was how I pitched the book in her birthday card: "this book is such a modern classic and literally has everything (war, romance, lost love, what-could’ves, unreliable narrators, love confessions, yearning, heartbreak, class tensions, star-crossed lovers, coming-of-age, love letters, guilt, delusions, recollections of the past, love, love, and did I mention love?)"
a solid 3.5 (rated it a 4 on my first read) - some parts were a bit of a bore (honestly felt like length-wise this could've been more concise) but the ending was so worth the wait - broke my heart into little pieces, despite knowing the plot already
briony remained a dreamer, a romantic, a delulu girly till the end (no lessons learnt.)
love how she tried to present her self as magnanimous ("a final act of kindness") to conceal the fact that she, once again, hid behind her imagination to save her from confronting the true extent of her actions.
some quotes:
"the truth had become as ghostly as invention"
"how guilt refined the methods of self-torture, threading the beads of detail into an eternal loop, a rosary to be fingered for a lifetime"
"his most sensual memories...were bleached colourless through overuse"
"the truth instructed her eyes"
"the light that dropped like jewels through the fresh foliage to make pools among last year's dead leaves"
"she blinked rapidly as she spoke, dazzled by the momentous truth she had revealed"
"of course, of course."
"to love her was to be soothed"
"falling in love could be achieved in a single word - a glance."
"aqueous sunlight ripped over the spines of books and the smell of warm dust was everywhere"
also loved the musings about how writers play God - very meta
reread and annotated this book as a gift to a friend who requested tragic love stories; this was how I pitched the book in her birthday card: "this book is such a modern classic and literally has everything (war, romance, lost love, what-could’ves, unreliable narrators, love confessions, yearning, heartbreak, class tensions, star-crossed lovers, coming-of-age, love letters, guilt, delusions, recollections of the past, love, love, and did I mention love?)"
a solid 3.5 (rated it a 4 on my first read) - some parts were a bit of a bore (honestly felt like length-wise this could've been more concise) but the ending was so worth the wait - broke my heart into little pieces, despite knowing the plot already
briony remained a dreamer, a romantic, a delulu girly till the end (no lessons learnt.)
love how she tried to present her self as magnanimous ("a final act of kindness") to conceal the fact that she, once again, hid behind her imagination to save her from confronting the true extent of her actions.
some quotes:
"the truth had become as ghostly as invention"
"how guilt refined the methods of self-torture, threading the beads of detail into an eternal loop, a rosary to be fingered for a lifetime"
"his most sensual memories...were bleached colourless through overuse"
"the truth instructed her eyes"
"the light that dropped like jewels through the fresh foliage to make pools among last year's dead leaves"
"she blinked rapidly as she spoke, dazzled by the momentous truth she had revealed"
"of course, of course."
"to love her was to be soothed"
"falling in love could be achieved in a single word - a glance."
"aqueous sunlight ripped over the spines of books and the smell of warm dust was everywhere"
also loved the musings about how writers play God - very meta
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
mysterious
Loveable characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
emotional
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
First read 20 years or so ago and I remember having mixed feelings about it. Have my opinions changed?
McEwan is one of my favourite authors and Atonement is the novel that he is most well known for. It's certainly full of passion, drama and tension – but I'm still not sure that it's one of his best. It's divided into four distinct parts which don't quite hang together. Consequently the storyline feels disjointed with a convoluted ending that's left hanging, almost as though McEwan was in two minds as to how to tell it and then wrap it up.
The book focusses on three main characters: recent Cambridge graduates and lovers to be, Cecilia and Robbie; and Cecilia's meddling and petulant 13-year-old sister Briony, whose vivid imagination leads to her wrongful accusation and condemnation of Robbie (in part one of the novel), which she later tries to atone for – and this atonement forms the heart of the novel. Large parts of the story are told through Briony's eyes. The trouble is, as readers, we don't want to spend so much time with Briony because we dislike her for her selfishness and for the awful crime she has committed. And despite her atonement and her good-side (that becomes apparent in her occupation as a nurse), we'd still rather the story focussed more on the drama and passion of the relationship between Cecilia and Robbie, rather than on Briony. As a reader, I was itching to witness the scene where Robbie (after his evacuation from Dunkirk and earlier imprisinoment) is reunited with Cecilia, but McEwan fails to give us this and instead, Robbie's re-appearance is suddenly shoe-horned much later into the novel. We want to hear Cecilia and Robbie's stories in old age, not Briony's.
The first couple of chapters feel very slow and unnecessarily wordier than I remembered from my first reading. McEwan repeats parts of the same story through different eyes (in third person), so for instance chapter 1 is from Briony's point of view, chapter 2 is from Cecilia's POV, chapter 3 is back with Briony, 4 with Cecilia, 5 is told by an omniscient POV, chapter 6 is told through mother Emily's eyes, 7 is through Briony's eyes again, and so on. So the reader trips back in time as certain scenes are repeated in order to show them through different eyes. This works fine (you quickly become used to it) but another way to have written it to avoid repetition and to give more flow and pace, would have been to have kept the same scene rolling and to have simply cut between the different POVs (and to have indicated the change of POV with extra space, or some other simple typographic device between paragraphs.
But I always enjoy McEwan's observations and telling detail: children's giggling fits at the dinner table (p51 of hardback edition); the light touch on Cecilia's forearm by a leaf or was it a hand (p54); Briony's vivid imagination as she slashes at stinging nettles with a stick (p74), Robbie's erotic recollections of Cecilia after emerging from the fountain (p79); a description of a hot summer's evening, '...grasses giving off their sweet cattle smell, the earth that still held the embers of the day's heat ... and the faint breeze carrying from the lake a flavour of green and silver' and later, 'the breeze pouring through the tops of the trees ... millions of separate and precise observations bombarded her senses' (p156 and p162); how the injured Robbie draws strength from his recollections of his last kiss with Cecilia (p206); and a super description of Briony descending to the underground, '...into the dirty yellow light, to the head of the clanking, creaking escalator ... into the man-made breeze rising from its blackness, the breath of a million Londoners cooling her face and tugging at her cape ... gliding down through the soupy brown light'. Super descriptions.
Re-watched the film on Netflix after finishing the novel. It's a very good adaption, beautifully shot and of course, Kiera Knightley is fabulous as Cecilia. The final scenes add clarity (and sadness) rather than leave the story hanging. I guess I wanted a happy ending. :-/
McEwan is one of my favourite authors and Atonement is the novel that he is most well known for. It's certainly full of passion, drama and tension – but I'm still not sure that it's one of his best. It's divided into four distinct parts which don't quite hang together. Consequently the storyline feels disjointed with a convoluted ending that's left hanging, almost as though McEwan was in two minds as to how to tell it and then wrap it up.
The book focusses on three main characters: recent Cambridge graduates and lovers to be, Cecilia and Robbie; and Cecilia's meddling and petulant 13-year-old sister Briony, whose vivid imagination leads to her wrongful accusation and condemnation of Robbie (in part one of the novel), which she later tries to atone for – and this atonement forms the heart of the novel. Large parts of the story are told through Briony's eyes. The trouble is, as readers, we don't want to spend so much time with Briony because we dislike her for her selfishness and for the awful crime she has committed. And despite her atonement and her good-side (that becomes apparent in her occupation as a nurse), we'd still rather the story focussed more on the drama and passion of the relationship between Cecilia and Robbie, rather than on Briony. As a reader, I was itching to witness the scene where Robbie (after his evacuation from Dunkirk and earlier imprisinoment) is reunited with Cecilia, but McEwan fails to give us this and instead, Robbie's re-appearance is suddenly shoe-horned much later into the novel. We want to hear Cecilia and Robbie's stories in old age, not Briony's.
The first couple of chapters feel very slow and unnecessarily wordier than I remembered from my first reading. McEwan repeats parts of the same story through different eyes (in third person), so for instance chapter 1 is from Briony's point of view, chapter 2 is from Cecilia's POV, chapter 3 is back with Briony, 4 with Cecilia, 5 is told by an omniscient POV, chapter 6 is told through mother Emily's eyes, 7 is through Briony's eyes again, and so on. So the reader trips back in time as certain scenes are repeated in order to show them through different eyes. This works fine (you quickly become used to it) but another way to have written it to avoid repetition and to give more flow and pace, would have been to have kept the same scene rolling and to have simply cut between the different POVs (and to have indicated the change of POV with extra space, or some other simple typographic device between paragraphs.
But I always enjoy McEwan's observations and telling detail: children's giggling fits at the dinner table (p51 of hardback edition); the light touch on Cecilia's forearm by a leaf or was it a hand (p54); Briony's vivid imagination as she slashes at stinging nettles with a stick (p74), Robbie's erotic recollections of Cecilia after emerging from the fountain (p79); a description of a hot summer's evening, '...grasses giving off their sweet cattle smell, the earth that still held the embers of the day's heat ... and the faint breeze carrying from the lake a flavour of green and silver' and later, 'the breeze pouring through the tops of the trees ... millions of separate and precise observations bombarded her senses' (p156 and p162); how the injured Robbie draws strength from his recollections of his last kiss with Cecilia (p206); and a super description of Briony descending to the underground, '...into the dirty yellow light, to the head of the clanking, creaking escalator ... into the man-made breeze rising from its blackness, the breath of a million Londoners cooling her face and tugging at her cape ... gliding down through the soupy brown light'. Super descriptions.
Re-watched the film on Netflix after finishing the novel. It's a very good adaption, beautifully shot and of course, Kiera Knightley is fabulous as Cecilia. The final scenes add clarity (and sadness) rather than leave the story hanging. I guess I wanted a happy ending. :-/
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Not sure what to say. For once, I am speechless. Even though I watched the movie adaptation a few years ago, the story still felt fresh and new to me. To see such a clever plot beautifully executed in the imagery of the settings and characterisation of the protagonists was more vivid and real to me.
Briony’s drastic change from an overly-confident and ignorant child to a meek adult is simply reflected in the style of writing as well as her black and white to grey perception of the crime and her actions. Her atonement of creating a happy and child-like fantastical ending for Robbie and Cecilia was a beautiful and integral moment plot of the story - I also believe that her dementia is a part of her atonement; her loss of memory may be a blessing, but the constant state of fear and uncertainty of not knowing where and who you are overrides this.
Time for me to watch the move again I guess.
Time for me to watch the move again I guess.
It took about 150 pages to actually get into it but if you're willing to get through that, the rest is great.