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A review by moonlit_zdrasti
Atonement by Ian McEwan
4.0
A meandering novel that unfolds a horrific story about love and loss. This was written in a way I cannot fault or disparage legitimately; however, I think it possessed long stretches of voidless extrapolation.
Very few times have I ever read a book where action seemed impossible at every given moment—and, in fact, action was strongly discouraged unless characters were being directly informed or instructed to do something of that nature. This book was interesting in the sense that it brought up The Waves by Virginia Woolf as a touchstone, at least in terms of its writing style, particularly from Briony’s perspective. However, Woolf still allowed personal consciousness to reach pinnacles of action. No matter what, in To the Lighthouse, the individuals were going to the lighthouse. In Mrs. Dalloway, there was suicide—intimately of the self.
Whereas here, every action felt necessarily tied to another character’s suggestion, indication, or purpose. It was a bizarre experience to read a novel so dense with prose where action was not the priority of the plot. Instead, the vehicle of the plot was thought itself: the spiraling of individualism that never went anywhere. It was always this stone that sunk the characters in their own mire and desecrated their ability to function within a cause. Cecilia couldn’t interact with Briony’s cloying request for absolution of the crime because she was seeking approval from Robbie. Robbie couldn’t escape the situation by himself because he was constantly being roped back into these groupings with other corporals, or when he tried to save the Flemish woman and her child. There was never a moment where individualism truly flourished in this novel; instead, it was more about the interconnectedness of individuals at every given point.
This was all really amplified toward the end of the novel when Briony makes a statement about her inability to truly atone for the mistakes of the story—because she had to wait until everyone was dead before the law could pursue her. And then, she had no way of doing something within words that wasn’t totalitarian, because she describes herself as a god-like individual as a novelist.
This book was a fascinating combination of stream of consciousness in a way I have never interacted with before—and therefore, it was extremely tantalizing and provocative.
Very few times have I ever read a book where action seemed impossible at every given moment—and, in fact, action was strongly discouraged unless characters were being directly informed or instructed to do something of that nature. This book was interesting in the sense that it brought up The Waves by Virginia Woolf as a touchstone, at least in terms of its writing style, particularly from Briony’s perspective. However, Woolf still allowed personal consciousness to reach pinnacles of action. No matter what, in To the Lighthouse, the individuals were going to the lighthouse. In Mrs. Dalloway, there was suicide—intimately of the self.
Whereas here, every action felt necessarily tied to another character’s suggestion, indication, or purpose. It was a bizarre experience to read a novel so dense with prose where action was not the priority of the plot. Instead, the vehicle of the plot was thought itself: the spiraling of individualism that never went anywhere. It was always this stone that sunk the characters in their own mire and desecrated their ability to function within a cause. Cecilia couldn’t interact with Briony’s cloying request for absolution of the crime because she was seeking approval from Robbie. Robbie couldn’t escape the situation by himself because he was constantly being roped back into these groupings with other corporals, or when he tried to save the Flemish woman and her child. There was never a moment where individualism truly flourished in this novel; instead, it was more about the interconnectedness of individuals at every given point.
This was all really amplified toward the end of the novel when Briony makes a statement about her inability to truly atone for the mistakes of the story—because she had to wait until everyone was dead before the law could pursue her. And then, she had no way of doing something within words that wasn’t totalitarian, because she describes herself as a god-like individual as a novelist.
This book was a fascinating combination of stream of consciousness in a way I have never interacted with before—and therefore, it was extremely tantalizing and provocative.