Reviews of Atonement: A Novel

Atonement

Posted : 10 months ago on 26 February 2009 12:18 (A review of Atonement: A Novel)

Atonement. Just saying the title is enough to make one think that this is a stuffy piece of LIT-RA-TURE! Wrong. It is an engrossing, highly detailed, fully realized work that pulls the emotional rug out from underneath at the very end when you learn that everything you read was a lie. Briony Tallis will never get her forgiveness. There is no atonement, there is no happy ending for anybody. Bleak? Yes. Beautifully written? Yes. One of the best works in modern literature (as in, the past ten years or so)? Yes. Atonement starts off as one novel, and ends as an examination of the power of the written word, and, to a larger extent, artists and art. If we, as artists, use our work to explore our past wrong-doings, does that ever absolve us of those wrong-doings? The answer lies in the reader. I said no. I still say no. Maybe you’ll disagree with me. But the first three-fourths of the book are written like a neo-Jane Austen novel. We have our lovers, who don’t know that they’re in love with each other yet, our intrusive younger sibling, explorations and examinations of class-culture divides in England, and the planning of a party. Yes, some of this really happened? But what? Yes, Robbie really did go to war, and, yes, Cecilia really did become a nurse. Where does the true story end and Briony’s imagination expand, revise, or altogether delete the events? I don’t know. I don’t want to know. I think, even at the end of the novel she knows that there is no forgiveness for her. Did I mention that I read it in four days?

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