Book Review: Atonement

“A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended.” 

I know.  Sacre Bleu!  Two posts in one day!  I must say, that I finished a book today, and I felt like writing its review today.  And thus, two posts in one day.  There has always been a little strange pull in me to read this book.  Perhaps because the movie is rated R, and I'll never see it?  I'm not sure.  But I read it.  And guys.  I definitely ventured into Big-People literature on this one.

After reading a lewd, but basically-consensual and relatively harmless, love letter between their housekeeper's son, Robbie, and her older sister, Cecilia, 13-year-old Briony believes that Robbie is a monster.  Her imaginative mind leads her to knowing that he must be a monster.  Her only impulse is that she knows she must protect her sister. That knowledge leads her to the police with false, eye-witness testimony that he is a monster and a predator to young girls throughout the community.  Years later, and realizing that the letter or the events following were not, as her immature mind had perceived it, predatory, she knows she has to atone for how she destroyed Robbie's life, but if she cannot reunite Cecilia and Robbie, that can never be done.  And if Robbie dies in Northern France, or her sister is killed in a London bombing, that is simply impossible. 

DISCLAIMER:  Not for children.  This book has one relatively sexually explicit scene which I basically skimmed, the same way I fast forward through them in movies. I'd call it a PG-13 in explicitness. Furthermore, as the "f-word" is quite common in lower-class British dialects, British soldiers will use it.  Liberally. 

Last disclaimer, I didn't mind it because it doesn't bother me.  But about 1/3 of the book is spent detailing the Dunkirk Retreat in all its gory glory.  Another 1/3 of the book takes place in a 1940-London hospital treating wounded soldiers from the perspective of a nurse.  And they will not spare your stomach, so if you can't do the gore, don't read this book.

I do have to share a line that resonated with me particularly: “She had lolled about for three years at Girton with the kind of books she could equally have read at home--Jane Austen, Dickens, Conrad, all in the library downstairs, in complete sets. How had that pursuit, reading the novels that others took as their leisure, let her think she was superior to anyone else?”  It reminded me of when, at college, an English Lit major plopped down next to me as I was studying leukemia cells (puke), with their copy of The Scarlet Letter and complained about how she had to read this and that it was so hard being an English major.  What are you talking about?  I would give serious money to be reading that right now.  That's what I read for fun! Your homework is my hobby.

 At first I found the book woefully pretentious.  As it went on, I thought that it was better on that front.  I didn't appreciate the "Library Scene," but I'm sure that's my Mormon spin.   The first 1/3 is difficult to get through, because of the "prententiousness" and lack of interest.    The descriptions are quite exquisite, and the descriptions are beautiful.  I am dialogue-over-prose kind of person, so I appreciate that the prose was great; but the dialogue left a lot to be desired.  The symbolism sometimes got so blatant that I couldn't help but think, "Are you trying to make kids in high school English not even have to think to write their papers, or something, because this seems unnecessary?"  However, the agony of Briony and the way she weaves the story is intriguing.   I can't say that I'd tell anyone that they HAVE to read this book, but in the end it's a deep analysis of guilt and forgiveness.

3 stars for the book everyone loves.