There are nods to so many other books, from Northanger Abbey, to A Passage to India, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, even Henry James. It's complex, many-layered and brilliantly crafted. I have a feeling of being reluctant to mention an incident or a setting as it really should be met in the context of the story. It's a tribute to the book to say that it's very difficult to review. How small is Briony's crime in the context of such carnage? It's an elegant refutation of the 'heroic rescue' which has found its place in British history. I could smell the battle and taste the defeat.

The second part, when we follow Robbie at Dunkirk, is more the McEwan that I know and where he's possibly strongest. It's unlike any McEwan that I've read before but it's a perfect evocation of that period just before the Second World War when we hurtled unknowingly, unthinkingly into Hell. In the first part of the book the events are momentous but there's still a sense of drifting, going nowhere. The letter which he'd sent to Cecilia condemned him in everyone's eyes. Later that evening the twins run away and in the search for them Briony interrupts a sexual attack on her cousin Lola and is so convinced that the rapist is Robbie that he's arrested despite Cecilia's protesting his innocence. Briony's imagination is fertile and vivid and when she later interrupts Cecilia and Robbie's lovemaking she interprets this as an attack on Cecilia. In fact he writes two letters, one of which is more suggestive than the other and in a Freudian slip it's this letter which Briony delivers to Cecilia - after she's read it. Robbie decides to write a letter to Cecilia to explain his feelings for her. It is the fountain which is to change everything. Robbie is startled and Briony, who sees what happens, doesn't know what to make of it. Whilst watering some flowers Cecilia and Robbie break a vase and Cecilia strips to her underwear to jump into the fountain and retrieve the fragments. Also there, home from college, is Briony's sister, Cecilia, who has confused emotions about Robbie Turner, son of the Tallis' cleaning lady. The actors are her cousins, fifteen-year-old Lola and the nine-year-old twins Jackson and Pierrot. On a hot summer's day in 1935 thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis is planning the performance of a play which she has written in honour of her brother Leon. Recommended reading.Ī Times Educational Supplement Teachers' Top 100 Book

Summary: A superbly crafted book set just before the Second World War which explores the nature of guilt and how atonement is made.

Atonement ian