Atonement by Ian McEwan



My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's difficult to know how to feel about this book. I came to it with high expectations, having been highly intrigued by the glimpses I caught in a preview of the movie version released in 2007. What I saw (or thought I saw--ironically enough, the fine distinction between these two spheres of reality is at the heart of the story) there was a passionate love story with hopelessly tragic outcomes and sweeping beauty. What I found was a bit different. Atonement is passionate at times, beautiful even, but it is in a studied, self aware manner that almost robs the sensation of its value. I cannot count how many times the word "sensual" is used, often with a smug disdain, as if anything akin to common sensuality must be utterly abhorrent. The truth is, I am a bit annoyed at this book, because its casual self importance seems to be aimed at the reader, expecting us to gasp in awe when in fact nothing has really happened.



Even more annoying is the fact that I cannot be angry with this book, because the author has wittingly supplied himself with immunity, through some incredulous turns of events and narrative techniques. The book would have us believe that it is not, in fact, the product of the author at all, but of Briony Tallis, its main character, who is both infuriating and endearing and who we can be expected to resent without too much trouble. The true author, on the other hand, would have us believe that he is quite aware, thank you very much, of the weaknesses in his narrative, and it's all the part of some grand scheme which we, the reader, are not privy to. Ridiculous. Weaknesses in narrative are weaknesses in narrative. Yet this book is not exactly weak, in any sense. It is merely languid, like its characters until they are spurred into action by some insignificant, or highly significant happenstance. the humble reader can scarcely be expected to comprehend the difference.



The fact is that this book is splendidly written. It is a rare and awe-inspiring snapshot into human nature which is valuable for its content and style, if a bit uneven in its delivery. What infuriates me is that McEwan knowingly took the coward's way out, building up all that emotional intensity fueled with remorse and jealousy and horror and paranoia and, yes, love, into a huge stockpile of unraveling convictions, only to leave it be, skipping gaily off while his revealed narrator is left to descend into the crevices of forgetfulness and ignorance brought upon by a convenient disease and his other characters left to their fate--who knows what that is, exactly, since he doesn't deign to tell us in anything but the vaguest terms, and the reader is left in incredulity, flipping through the final pages, searching for some resolution. Wasn't this supposed to be about atonement, after all? Would it have been so much trouble to give up a little forgiveness, to cave in and offer a bit of a storyline, or, I don't know? A plot? A climax? The book is a series of competing climaxes all leading us, erroneously, to believe that some big revelation is on its way. Nope. Just a simple confirmation of facts, things that we already knew in a hazy sort of way. Forgiveness of any sort is just out of the reach of this frustratingly brilliant masterwork. The most it attains is forgetfulness.





According to one review I read of Atonement, there are all sorts of literary references placed in the narrative. It doesn’t surprise me that they’re there, nor that I would fail to recognize them—after all, I haven’t even read Virginia Woolf (yet).

So McEwan isn’t writing to me as his audience, and that’s fine. He’s perfectly entitled to his pretensions. And I’m perfectly entitled to get pissed off like the literary riffraff that I am when his highly crafted masterpiece doesn’t live up to my bourgeois expectations.

I know it’s hypocritical of me to get angry at McEwan for his plot weaknesses, when most of my novel attempts measure up to nothing more than description and overworked sentimentality. But then McEwan is a world renowned master novelist. I’m not. Doesn’t he have some creed to fulfill, some kind of writer’s responsibility, to give people what they came for? Apparently not.



In spite of all the hoopla, I could never quite bring myself to believe Robbie and Cecilia’s enduring love which seemed to me to be, at first, nothing more than an eruption of passion. It’s as if McEwan wants to be a romantic who believes in sentimentality and true love and all that rot, but can’t quite bring himself to abandon his objectivity and sense of superiority and surrender to these base human emotions. Or is their relationship all the product of Briony’s imagination? If she could polish up their ending, surely she could embellish a bit getting there. I suppose this is the kind of question McEwan expects his reader to ask, but it didn’t occur to me until after I had gone through all other possible reasons for their attachment. When reading a novel, I put some trust in the writer, expecting them to deliver a credible, absorbing story if I live up to my part of the bargain—finishing the book.



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