Atonement

♣♣♣♣♣/♣♣♣♣♣

13-year-old Briony Tallis wants to be a writer and makes it a habit to write stories and plays that she asks her cousins to present, with her as director. This summer is no different as her cousins Lola and her twin brothers Jackson and Pierrot all spend time at the Tallis’ vast country estate in the midst of their parents’ divorce. Cecilia, Briony’s older sister, is bored after her stint at Cambridge and is annoyed at her childhood friend Robbie, who lives with his mother in a cabin that her father has gifted them in exchange for housework. Also coming back home are Leon, the sisters’ eldest sibling who is bringing his friend Paul Marshall along with him. At the end of a long day, the family dinner is marred by the disappearance of the twins and what is later concluded as sexual assault of their sister Lola by an unknown assailant, whom Briony swears she knows and saw, leading to an accusation that will ruin one too many lives.

The novel is divided into four parts. The first part focuses on that one long day that sets the chain reaction of events that serve as the backbone of the novel. The second part is a “personal” account in the frontlines of WWII. The third part is a flashforward to Briony working as a nurse during the same period, which introduces us to her new life as well as her process of atoning for her sins. The last part is an even longer flash forward to Briony in her 70’s, now a successful novelist, and attempting to reconcile with the demons of her past. This is also where you get to read the big twist which is heartbreaking AF.

As an adult, it is normal to get annoyed or mad at a child, but is it normal to hate a child? Because this is what I actually feel for that spoiled brat Briony demon child, even days after finishing the novel. I never had the chance to watch the 2007 film adaptation, even though I am well aware that Saoirse Ronan scored her first career Oscar nomination in supporting for the role, and a lot of people seem to hate her for it until now in a rather common blurring of lines between role and actor, which means she did a terrific job. Or perhaps Briony is just a really well-written antagonist meant to push your buttons as a reader?

But should she even be considered as a child when she committed her crime? She was 13 years old, far from a kid who doesn’t know right from wrong. What’s clear is that her ambitions drove her to embellish her eyewitness report because she wanted to write a novel. There is nothing wrong with ambition per se, children, but when it leads to lives going to hell for your benefit, that is just plain wrong. And so we get an entire novel which is revealed to be a novel within a novel composed by dear Briony here, the titular atonement she has been trying to accomplish all her life for all that guilt that has been consuming her since.

And that is one other aspect of storytelling that I admire about this novel, because the author (Ian McEwan, not Briony) gives you a glimpse of the writing process. Some might consider Atonement to be a war novel. A tragedy. However, it is also a novelist’s novel. How much of yourself as a writer can be traced back to you through your work? What is your intention for writing and where do you draw the line between hard facts and alternative facts colored by your own experience not just as a writer but as a human being with a life’s worth of experiences? Briony allows us to take a peek, and the process comes across as complicated yet intriguing.

In the end I feel, as a vengeful reader stanning Robbie and Cecilia, that there is a lack of poetic justice here. After all, spoiled brat Briony gets what she wants, which is a successful career as a writer, while the people she wronged to get there do not even get a happy ending. But perhaps what I am missing here is the fact that despite all the success, she probably never got even one night of good sleep all those years. I suppose her conscience just wouldn’t let her, unless she is a psychopath. While the atonement she is hoping for is encapsulated in the final novel that she couldn’t publish, we can conclude that the life she has lived is the atonement itself.

As for the writer himself, Ian McEwan? Well, this is my first foray into this novelist's work and I must say that I am impressed. His style of storytelling has a certain element in it that just draws you in and evokes in you a strong emotional response that lingers even long after you are done digesting his prose. Awesome read!