Atonement (2001)
4.5 Stars out of 5Ian McEwan
340 pages
Ian McEwan has written a near master piece of fiction with
his 2001 novel “Atonement”. The story is told in three parts with a coda that
is exculpatory as well as explanatory. The story’s three parts occur in the
1935 English countryside, the 1940 French countryside on the road to Dunkirk,
and 1940 London. The coda is told in contemporary (1999) London. McEwan spends
a good deal of time blending into his overall story the nuances of good
writing, the all too common English fascination with class distinction and privilege,
but mostly he spins a tale of unintended consequences; one that is intricately
designed to show the effects of a youthful imagination on the lives of others.
These effects are far-reaching and ultimately come to tragically shape the life
of the young protagonist/fantasist as well as that of her chain-smoking sister
and her working class lover.
Part one begins with thirteen year old Briony Tallis preparing
a play to welcome her cousins to the Tallis estate. The cousins consist of two six
year old male twins and their fifteen year old sister, Lola. Briony is as
intellectually precocious as Lola is eager to prove that she is no longer a
child but a woman grown. Also arriving at the estate is Briony’s older sister Cecilia
and older brother, Leon. Once he has arrived, Leon is shown to have brought his
wealthy friend, Paul Marshall. As the day wears on, Briony observes from afar an
odd interaction between Cecilia and the neighbor boy, Robbie. Unlike the Tallis
family, Robbie is poor and in fact is the son of a Tallis family servant. The
patriarch of the Tallis family, Jack has taken an active interest in the
welfare of Robbie and has in fact put him through college. Robbie has excelled
in college and seems likely to be on his way to medical school. Behind these
scenes though brews a growing love between Cecilia and Robbie. Thus, their
interaction when seen out of any context that the intelligent but still
immature Briony can understand causes her to drastically misinterpret Robbie’s
actions. Late in the same day when Briony happens upon someone departing in the
dark from a visibly distressed Lola, Briony puts her imagination to work and
concludes that Robbie has assaulted Lola. She reports this act to the police as
Lola sits in silence during the ensuing interrogation. Robbie is sent to
prison.
Part two concerns Robbie as he trudges towards Dunkirk with
his fellow English soldiers. The English have suffered a catastrophic defeat at
the hands of the Germans in 1940’s France, and they have been ordered to
retreat to Dunkirk to await shipment back to England. Robbie is injured both physically
from German shrapnel and from five years in an English prison for a crime he
has protested his innocence. Despite his rank of private, he is regarded by the
two rough corporals that he has fallen in with as a member of the upper
classes: Robbie speaks fluent French and he clearly is far more intelligent
than the average enlisted man – how could he be other than a member of the
upper classes? Robbie reaches Dunkirk. He is riven by pain, and screams out as
he tries to sleep. When warned to stay silent, he comments, “you won’t hear
another sound from me”.
Part three jumps from France to London and follows the now
remorseful Briony as she works as a student nurse. The irony of upper class
Briony forsaking her class to work as a nurse stands in contrast to Robbie’s
appearance as a member of the upper class. Briony has come to realize that
perhaps her testimony against Robbie may have been faulty; before part three is
over there is little doubt in her mind. She learns of an impending marriage
between her cousin Lola and the wealthy Paul Marshall, and determines to attend
the ceremony despite not being invited. As these events unfold, she slowly
starts to put together other pieces of information available to her at the time
of the assault in 1935, and she comes to a completely new explanation for what
Robbie was imprisoned. That she comes to the full realization of her crime too
late to do Robbie much good is not made clear until the book’s conclusion.
Briony has grown to become an elderly but highly successful writer
in the coda. She has become somewhat wiser over the years, of course but still
seems to me to be excusing her behavior somewhat. Indeed McEwan has done some
excusing as well – Briony is successful, well regarded, as are the true
miscreants in the 1935 event, but the truly innocent have gone to their graves,
their reputations still tarnished. Is it McEwan’s intent to excuse Briony as
evidenced by her adult successes or is he intending irony? It could easily be
the latter. McEwan is a remarkably skilled writer. The main point of this novel
is to create a scenario in which a character, Briony draws wrong conclusions
about her observations, someone else, Robbie pays the price for that initial
error and the ensuing avalanche of events that all work to condemn an innocent
man, and then further events conspire to prevent Briony from ever confessing
her guilt to the accused, let alone from receiving any kind of forgiveness for
her actions. Briony seeks her atonement in part three of the book, but the
manner in which she does so is not clear until the very end of the coda.
McEwan has adopted in part one much of the style and some of
the themes of a Jane Austin novel. The language is artful and stylized; McEwan
even begins the book with a quote from Austin’s Northhanger Abbey to warm up
the reader. Like all Austin books there is a preponderance of class
distinctions that help shape the characters and most definitely drive the plot.
Consider the near non-existent evidence that sends Robbie to prison: it was
solely the testimony of a young adolescent and a dubious out of context “love
letter”. No other suspects were sought but one other lower class possibility; no
physical evidence, no alibi accepted. Robbie was the right class to be the “maniac”
as described by Briony. Just like modern America, if someone, some ethnic class
member seems to fit the role of criminal, he is far along the path to being
found guilty before he has even opened his mouth in defense. It is no less true
in this country in the early twenty-first century than England in the early twentieth
century.
Like many other books and movies in recent years, “Atonement” makes use of
the unreliable narrator trope. One of my favorite lines in the book has Briony
the writer confessing that she never felt any undue obligation to the truth –
again a great use of irony when one considers the overall arc of the book. But
it comes a little too close to one of my complaints about the book: McEwan
writes on multiple occasion scenes that describe some subtle action or implication
that helps explicate one of the characters, and then in the next sentence or
two he spells it out for the reader. This is not really necessary for a book at
this level of sophistication. Additionally, there are a plot holes that bother
me as I read the book (chief among them being, would a thirteen year-old’s
testimony really be sufficient to send someone to prison; and what was really
going on in Lola’s mind – could a fifteen year old really see so clearly to the
implications and possibilities of her own assault?). However, the complexity of
the book’s structure, the lovely language in part one, and the delicious irony
of Briony finally figuring out the true events of that night in 1935 but having
no way to confess or atone but for the manner shown in part three make this
book truly worth reading.
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