A review by sulaco
Atonement by Ian McEwan

dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I do not like this author's writing style. Having dropped reading "Amsterdam", a book by the same author, quite early on I expected I would do it again. But I decided to push on and I don't regret it. It starts very slow, there's a lot of needless detail about things that are of no importance to the overall story or character development. And then you reach an inciting incident, consequences of which are rather horrifying. The idea of tracing multiple characters lives as they are drastically changed by one shared event is quite interesting and was well done. That said I still think it could do with a bit of trimming, and the flow of it feels slow, especially at the beginning, in a way I can't accurately describe.
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