Atonement: A Novel - Softcover

McEwan, Ian

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0307388840 ISBN 13: 9780307388841

Publisher: Anchor Books, 2007

Synopsis

In 1935 England, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses an event involving her sister Cecilia and her childhood friend Robbie Turner, and she becomes the victim of her own imagination, which leads her on a lifelong search for truth and absolution. Reissue. (A Focus Features film, written by Christopher Hampton, directed by Joe Wright, releasing Fall 2007, starring Keira Knightley, James McAvoy, Brenda Blethyn, Vanessa Redgrave, & Romola Garai) (General Fiction)

About this title

Review:

Atonement is Ian McEwan's ninth novel and his first since the Booker Prize-winning Amsterdam in 1998. But whereas Amsterdam was a slim, sleek piece, Atonement is a more sturdy, ambitious work, allowing McEwan more room to play, think and experiment.

We meet 13-year-old Briony Tallis in the summer of 1935, as she attempts to stage a production of her new drama The Trials of Arabella to welcome home her elder, idolised brother Leon. But she soon discovers that her cousins, the glamorous Lola and the twin boys Jackson and Pierrot, aren't up to the task, and directorial ambitions are abandoned as more interesting preoccupations come onto the scene. The charlady's son Robbie Turner appears to be forcing Briony's sister Cecilia to strip in the Fountain and sends her obscene letters; Leon has brought home a dim chocolate magnate keen for a war to promote his new "Army Amo" bar; and upstairs Briony's migraine-stricken mother Emily keeps tabs on the house from her bed. Soon, secrets emerge that change the lives of everyone present...

The interwar upper-middle-class setting of the book's long, masterfully sustained opening section might recall Virginia Woolf or Henry Green, but as we move forward--eventually to the turn of the 21st century--the novel's central concerns emerge, and McEwan's voice becomes clear, even personal. For at heart, Atonement is about the pleasures, pains and dangers of writing, and perhaps even more, about the challenge of controlling what readers make of your writing. McEwan shouldn't have any doubts about readers of Atonement: this is a thoughtful, provocative and at times moving book that will have readers applauding.--Alan Stewart

Review:

‘Isla Blair is a first-class choice to read McEwan's novel. Her predominantly theatre background lends just the right amount of drama to the reading.’ Guardian

‘...Isla Blair’s reading illuminates and intensifies McEwan’s words’. The Independent

About this edition

• Publisher: Anchor Books
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0307388840
• ISBN 13: 9780307388841
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 480