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It's the story of a thirteen-year-old girl, Briony Tallis, bearing false witness against Robbie Turner, longtime friend of the family. Turner is grappling with burgeoning attraction for Briony's older sister, Cecilia, and she is starting to contemplate Robbie as more than just a friend. The worst that might be said of Robbie is that he is uncertain of where his future lies--he dabbles in gardening but then sets his eye on the medical field--but this has never stopped Cecilia's father from supporting Robbie, financially, in all his endeavors (Robbie has not had a father in a long time). Enter Briony--she of the fanciful imagination, who attaches a false air of the sinister to some of Robbie's behaviour towards Cecilia, simply, it seems, because her young writer's view of the world prompts her to look for real-world cads. Admittedly, Robbie is a bit loutish around Cecilia when the story starts, but his physical attraction to Cecilia is reciprocated, in an encounter that Briony, unnoticed by the new lovers in their passion, condemns as disgusting and evil. And then, Briony witnesses an attempted assault against her relative, Lola, in the dark, the perpetrator the same build as Robbie...

Part One of the book is slow-moving, but nevertheless compelling, with its feel of impending injustice. A young girl risks destroying lives and tearing apart a family, by convincing herself of an untruth that, once it is out of her mouth, the adults seize upon and pressure her to sustain. But--the book skips ahead to World War 2, a jaded Robbie who had his promising life with Cecilia washed away struggling to stay alive long enough to restart a new life with her. We also rejoin Briony as she tends to injured and dying soldiers and tries to come to grips with what she did in the past. The scenes are effective, but I couldn't help feeling cut off from lengthy Part One, which set such a powerful stage, contained such interesting side-characters who got summarily dismissed by the jump-ahead, and began to feel like some kind of extended prelude that possessed more punch than the following Parts. This novel certainly does not adhere to Unity of Time, Place and Action; I for one feel like certain key moments, that would have occurred right after Robbie is confronted by police believing a young girl's story, got skipped, sadly, as we jumped instead to characters far-removed from the crux of the story, who performed grueling daily tasks while ruminating on their past. Certainly, Robbie slogging through the war wanting to get back to always-out-of-reach Cecilia creates tension, and watching Briony begin her life of penance washing blood from wounded soldiers evokes strong emotion. But I was still unsatisfied, as if I had been robbed of the truly meaningful moments. The book sits in distinct sections, all frustratingly cut off from each other, somewhat.

We leap ahead again at the end--this time far ahead. The wrap-up is a bit quick and neat, though at the same time deliberately mystifying. I sense the author trying to work out some burden of his own through Briony the grown writer, wrestling with the notion that a writer can try to make life all better by depicting it a certain way to make amends for past sins. Unfortunately, though I don't feel there is full-out author intrusion, Briony's final scenes seemed to further distance me from the once-meaningful first stage of the story. The book concerns itself with tying up loose ends well in the future, after lots of lives have been altered, and even this is dampened by the author dabbling in the idea that writers with penance to perform can seek catharsis by documenting lifelong pain in a manner that attempts reparation but can never quite achieve it at the very end. A self-indulgent move?

A thought-provoking book, but chopped cleanly into pieces at the bare bones, and a bit too much about writers' angst at the finale, considering where we started out.

Opening the novel in 1935, McEwan creates an intense, edgy, and almost claustrophobic mood. England is on the brink of war; Briony, a budding writer, is on the edge of adolescence; her newly graduated sister Cecilia is thinking of her future life; and Robbie is about to start medical school. The summer is unusually hot. Troubled young cousins have arrived because their parents are on the verge of divorce; Briony's mother is suffering from migraines; her father is "away," working for the government; her adored brother Leon and a friend have arrived from Cambridge; and Briony, an "almost only child," with a hypersensitive imagination, finds her world threatened.

Step by step, McEwan leads his characters to disaster, each individual action and misstep simple, explainable, and logical. The engaged reader sees numerous dramatic ironies and waits for everything to snap. When Briony finally commits her long-foreshadowed "crime," the results are cataclysmic, and the world, as they know it, ends for several characters.

Giving depth to his themes of truth, justice, honesty, guilt and innocence, and punishment and atonement, McEwan uses shifting points of view and an extended time frame. Part I is Briony's. In Part II, five years after the crime, Robbie, now a footsoldier retreating from the French countryside to Dunkirk, continues the same themes, seeing the crimes of war, not only between the combatants but against civilians and, at Dunkirk, by the Brits against each other. In Part III, Briony, atoning for her earlier crime by working as a student nurse, rather than studying to be a writer, brings the past and present together, tending the casualties of war. The ending takes place in 1999, at her 77th birthday party.

This is a totally absorbing, fully developed novel, the kind one always yearns for and so rarely finds! The characters, the atmosphere, the lush descriptions, the sensitively treated themes, the intriguing and unusual plot, and the rare entrée into the mind of a writer, both Briony and McEwan, give this novel a fascination few others achieve. It's hard to put this one down!

The novel begins in 1935 on a country estate in England. It is the hottest day in years. Thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis has been preparing a play to celebrate her brother's return. The play is a spectacle befitting the highly-strung teen dramatist. Her older sister Cecilia has just graduated from Cambridge, and Leon, the eldest child, gallivants around with budding entrepreneurs. Despite rehearsals, posters and tickets the play is never performed.

A female cousin is assaulted at the Tallis' mansion. For reasons that form the basis of the novel's exploration of guilt and blame, Briony claims to have witnessed the act and accuses Robbie Turner, son of the family housekeeper, of the crime. Further complicating the situation is the fact that Mr. Tallis (Briony's father) paid for his grammar school tuition and is also paying for his education at Oxford. The consequences are dire and Briony will spend the remainder of her long life pondering and attempting to atone for what she has done.

France's battlefields during early World War II abruptly introduce the novel's second half. Robbie Turner is now a wounded soldier in the British Army. McEwan writes starkly of the retreat to the coast through Turner's eyes. The narrative shifts to 18-year-old Briony, now in London. The novel chronicles her training as a nurse, her childhood sin looming over her the entire time. She works in preparation for a flood of casualties from the war, always hoping for a reconciliation with her sister, who disowned Briony after her false testimony.

The story ultimately emerges as a hopeful tale about families and our ability to atone for our errors. The essence of the tale is not clear until its conclusion.

Atonement is a tragedy of misunderstanding, weakness and malice. Divine intervention alone could mend the gashes within the Tallis family & the adult Briony is haunted by her childhood crime and feels its weight upon her. An amazing read. Highly recommended!