Atonement: A Novel
I finally finished reading Atonement by Ian McEwan yesterday - It's definitely the best book I've read since I read The World According to Garp in November. Unfortunately I don't think I can write a review or even a synopsis without giving away too much.
When I started reading the book, I was a little surprised at how slow it seemed to be. The other two books I've read by McEwan - Amsterdam and Enduring Love - were both page-turners from the beginning. The prose here, though, seemed languidly onerous which made the first 70-odd pages quite a chore. The good news is once you get through them, the rest is not only totally worth it but you realise that the initial tedium has its own purpose in the grand scheme of the novel.
The second part of the book that deals quite extensively with scenes of gore during the Second World War is absolutely gripping - McEwan's descriptions are painfully vivid but even as he talks about the resilience of love in the midst of hardship and carnage, he never descends into mawkishness. What I admire most about McEwan's writing is his ability to write curiously complex, psychologically intense and excruciatingly human characters. He also brings up some very important questions about the reliability of memory, the nature of guilt, the complications of atonement and finally the omnipotence of the novelist.
I'm going to abandon my attempts at writing about this book and direct people, instead, to the Guardian Review which basically verbalises my own feelings about the book without giving away any spoilers. Dyer says:
It is a tribute to the scope, ambition and complexity of Atonement that it is difficult to give an adequate sense of what is going on in the novel without preempting - and thereby diminishing - the reader's experience of it. Suffice to say, any initial hesitancy about style - any fear that, for once, McEwan may not be not in control of his material -all play their part in his larger purpose.
See? Almost exactly what I said.
I don't know what won the Booker Prize the year Atonement was nominated - and maybe the winner was fully deserving - but it seems quite unfortunate to me that McEwan won the coveted award for Amsterdam, which while being vaguely entertaining, pretty much fails in its attempt to be social satire. Fortunately I'd already read - and loved - Enduring Love before reading Amsterdam or I would've been largely indifferent to McEwan.
This is the kind of book that makes me wish I were in a reading group so I could discuss it at length. Has anyone else read it? Thoughts? Comments?
I'm really looking forward to reading his latest book Saturday now.
When I started reading the book, I was a little surprised at how slow it seemed to be. The other two books I've read by McEwan - Amsterdam and Enduring Love - were both page-turners from the beginning. The prose here, though, seemed languidly onerous which made the first 70-odd pages quite a chore. The good news is once you get through them, the rest is not only totally worth it but you realise that the initial tedium has its own purpose in the grand scheme of the novel.
The second part of the book that deals quite extensively with scenes of gore during the Second World War is absolutely gripping - McEwan's descriptions are painfully vivid but even as he talks about the resilience of love in the midst of hardship and carnage, he never descends into mawkishness. What I admire most about McEwan's writing is his ability to write curiously complex, psychologically intense and excruciatingly human characters. He also brings up some very important questions about the reliability of memory, the nature of guilt, the complications of atonement and finally the omnipotence of the novelist.
I'm going to abandon my attempts at writing about this book and direct people, instead, to the Guardian Review which basically verbalises my own feelings about the book without giving away any spoilers. Dyer says:
It is a tribute to the scope, ambition and complexity of Atonement that it is difficult to give an adequate sense of what is going on in the novel without preempting - and thereby diminishing - the reader's experience of it. Suffice to say, any initial hesitancy about style - any fear that, for once, McEwan may not be not in control of his material -all play their part in his larger purpose.
See? Almost exactly what I said.
I don't know what won the Booker Prize the year Atonement was nominated - and maybe the winner was fully deserving - but it seems quite unfortunate to me that McEwan won the coveted award for Amsterdam, which while being vaguely entertaining, pretty much fails in its attempt to be social satire. Fortunately I'd already read - and loved - Enduring Love before reading Amsterdam or I would've been largely indifferent to McEwan.
This is the kind of book that makes me wish I were in a reading group so I could discuss it at length. Has anyone else read it? Thoughts? Comments?
I'm really looking forward to reading his latest book Saturday now.
posted by Auri @ 2:44 PM
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