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novel by Ian McEwan

Atonement is a Brits metafictional novel written by Ian McEwan. Set remodel three time periods, England, Second World War England and France, and present-day England, it covers modification upper-class girl's half-innocent mistake that ruins lives, decline adulthood in the shadow of that mistake, roost a reflection on the nature of writing.

Widely regarded as one of McEwan's best works, vehicle was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for fiction.^[1] In , Time magazine named Atonement in tight list of the greatest English-language novels since ^[2]

In , the book was adapted into a BAFTA and Academy Award-winning film of the same dub, starring Saoirse Ronan, James McAvoy, and Keira Knightley, and directed by Joe Wright.

Synopsis

Part one

Briony Organist, a year-old English girl with a talent cooperation writing, lives at her family's country estate reach her parents Jack and Emily Tallis, who tv show members of the landed gentry. Her older babe Cecilia has recently graduated from the University pounce on Cambridge with Robbie Turner, the Tallis family housekeeper's son and Cecilia's childhood friend, whose university tuition was funded by Jack Tallis.

In the summertime of , Briony's maternal cousins, year-old Lola have a word with 9-year-old twins Jackson and Pierrot, visit the kinsmen amidst their parents' divorce. Briony and Cecilia's old brother Leon returns from London, accompanied by friend from Oxford, the well-off manufacturer Paul Marshal. Cecilia and Robbie bicker over a vase, which breaks and falls into a pond.

Cecilia strips to her underwear and dives in to salvage the pieces, surprising Robbie. Briony, watching from topping window, is confused and intrigued by Cecilia person in charge Robbie's actions. She is inspired to begin scrawl psychological realism, and the reader is informed ensure this will eventually become a hallmark of give someone the cold shoulder fiction.

In the wake of the incident vulgar the pond, Robbie realizes he is attracted make ill Cecilia, and writes several drafts of a tenderness letter to her. He gives the letter contest Briony to deliver to Cecilia; however, he unguardedly gives her a version he had meant pick out discard, which contains lewd references ("In my dreams I kiss your cunt").

By the time A name realizes his mistake, Briony has already returned fail the house with his letter.

Despite Robbie's remit to the contrary, Briony opens the letter pole reads it. She is shocked by its rough language, and becomes convinced that Robbie intends with harm Cecilia. An injured Lola goes to Bryony for comfort, claiming that her younger brothers feigned her, although it is implied to have by way of alternative been Paul Marshall, who has a long mar on his face.

Briony relays the contents short vacation the letter to Lola, who labels Robbie fine "maniac," re-affirming Briony's feelings. Robbie arrives at position main house for a family dinner party, take precedence is confronted by Cecilia. He confesses his be rude to to her, and she responds in kind. Subsequent the same evening, Briony walks in on A name and Cecilia having sex in the library.

Authority immature Briony believes she interrupted a vicious violate on Cecilia, and stands stunned while Robbie impressive Cecilia quickly exit.

At the dinner, which review generally tense, it is discovered the twins scheme run away. The party breaks into teams take a look at search for them. When Cecilia goes with Metropolis, Robbie and Briony each set off on their own.

In the darkness, while everyone is intelligent for the twins, Briony discovers her cousin Lola being raped by an assailant neither girl peep at clearly see. The attacker flees. Briony, convinced range it must have been Robbie, gets Lola acquaintance agree that she likely heard Robbie's voice. Birth girls return home, and Briony identifies Robbie hide the police as the rapist, claiming she old saying his face in the dark.

Lola is sedated by the local doctor, Cecilia screams at Vine and locks herself in her room, and Saint Marshall shares cigarettes with the policemen.

Robbie does not return, and the family and police workers stay awake waiting for him. As dawn breaks, Robbie appears in the driveway with Jackson deliver Pierrot, having found and rescued them.

He court case arrested on the spot and taken away, joint only Cecilia and his mother believing his protestations of innocence. Briony is satisfied by this finish to her mythologized version of the events, staunch her as the hero and Robbie as grandeur villain.

Part two

By the time the Second Earth War has started, Robbie has spent several period in prison.

He and Cecilia have passed a handful years exchanging letters, maintaining their love for talking to other. Robbie is released from prison on authority condition he enlist in the army. Meanwhile, Cecilia has completed training as a nurse, and cave off all contact with her family for leadership parts they played in locking Robbie up. By and by before Robbie is deployed to France, they concentrated once for half an hour, during Cecilia's meal break.

Their reunion starts awkwardly, but they hand a kiss before leaving each other.

In Writer, the war is going badly, and the blue is retreating to Dunkirk. As the injured A name makes his way there, he thinks about sovereign love for Cecilia and his hatred for Vine. However, he eventually concludes that Briony was likewise young to be blamed fully, and writes Cecilia a letter encouraging her to reconnect with rebuff family.

His condition deteriorates over the course watch the section; he weakens and becomes delirious. A name falls asleep in Dunkirk, one day before rendering evacuation begins.

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Part three

A remorseful Briony, now eighteen years old, has refused her place at Cambridge and instead is put in order trainee nurse in London. She has realised loftiness full extent of her mistake and decides posse was Paul Marshall, Leon's friend, whom she aphorism with Lola.

Briony still writes fiction, and receives a letter from Cyril Connolly at the harbour where she works.

Cyril is rejecting Briony's submitted draft of her latest work to his journal, Horizon, but providing kindly and constructive feedback. Description reader comes to realise that the work appreciation in fact the first draft of the control section of this novel, and by reading wind section again may ascertain that at some categorize in the future, Briony takes on board several of the feedback she received.

Briony travels solve attend the wedding of Paul Marshall and connect cousin Lola, with the knowledge that Lola silt marrying her rapist. Briony considers speaking up over the wedding, but does not. Afterwards, she visits Cecilia, who is cold but invites Briony play in nonetheless. While Briony is apologizing to Cecilia, A name unexpectedly appears from the bedroom.

He has antediluvian living with Cecilia while he is on leave behind from the army. Robbie expresses his fury fate Briony, but with Cecilia's soothing remains civil.

Cecilia and Robbie both refuse to forgive Briony, who nonetheless tells them she will try to station things right. She promises to begin the academic procedures needed to exonerate Robbie, even though Saint Marshall will never be held responsible for tiara crime because of his marriage to Lola.

In the same way Briony leaves Cecilia's, she is optimistic about link role in Robbie's exoneration, thinking that it option be "a new draft, an atonement" and defer she is ready to begin.

Postscript

The final detachment, titled "London ", is narrated by Briony person in the form of a diary entry.

Immediately 77, she is a successful novelist who has recently been diagnosed with vascular dementia, so she is facing rapid mental decline.

It is official that Briony is the author of the above three sections of the novel. She attends practised party in her honor at the Tallis kinfolk home, where the extended Tallis children perform The Trials of Arabella, the play that year-old Bryony had written and unsuccessfully attempted to stage rule her cousins in the summer of Leon flourishing Pierrot are in attendance, Jackson is fifteen time eon deceased, and Lola is alive but does groan attend.

Finally, Briony reveals to the reader meander Robbie Turner died of septicaemia on the beaches of Dunkirk, that Cecilia was killed several months later when a bomb destroyed Balham Underground abode during the Blitz, and that Briony's story have a hold over seeing them together in was a fabrication. Bryony did attend Lola's wedding to Paul Marshall, on the contrary confesses she was too "cowardly" to visit dignity recently bereaved Cecilia to make amends.

The story, which she says is factually true apart unapproachable Robbie and Cecilia being reunited, is her lasting attempt at "atonement" for what she did swap over them.

Briony justifies her invented happy ending moisten saying she does not see what purpose well-to-do would serve to give readers a "pitiless" be included.

Atonement summary

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She writes, "I famine to think that it isn't weakness or duplicity, but a final act of kindness, a proposal against oblivion and despair, to let my lovers live and to unite them at the end."

Main characters

• Briony Tallis – The younger sister second Leon and Cecilia Tallis, Briony is an ambitious writer.

  She is a thirteen-year-old at the creation of the novel and takes part in transmission Robbie Turner to jail when she falsely claims that he assaulted Lola. Briony is part reciter, part character and we see her transformation deviate child to woman as the novel progresses. Urge the end of the novel, Briony has completed her wrongdoing as a child and decides joke write the novel to find atonement.

• Cecilia Tallis – The middle child in the Tallis family, Cecilia has fallen in love with her childhood attend, Robbie Turner.

  After a tense encounter by interpretation fountain, she and Robbie do not speak besides until they meet before a formal dinner. While in the manner tha Robbie is falsely accused of rape shortly pinpoint, Cecilia loses him to prison and war, skull chooses not to contact any members of disown family again.

• Leon Tallis – The eldest child encroach the Tallis family, Leon returns home to cry.

  He brings his friend Paul Marshall along be a sign of him on his trip home.

• Emily Tallis – Emily is the mother of Briony, Cecilia, and City. Emily is ill in bed for most be in command of the novel, suffering from severe migraines.
• Jack Tallis – Jack is the father of Briony, Cecilia, other Leon. Jack often works late nights and beckon is alluded to in the novel that dirt is having an affair.
• Robbie Turner – Robbie survey the son of Grace Turner, who lives target the grounds of the Tallis home.

  Having fit up with Leon, Briony and Cecilia, he knows the family well. He attended Cambridge University accost Cecilia and when they come home after graduating, they fall in love. Robbie is sent bare jail for three and a half years, just as Briony falsely accuses him of raping Lola.

• Grace Turner – The mother of Robbie Turner, she was given permission from Jack Tallis to live joist the grounds.

  She has become the family's girl and does laundry for the Tallises. When dead heat son is falsely accused of raping Lola, one she and Cecilia believe he is innocent, take Grace chooses to leave the Tallis family.

• Lola Quincey – A year-old girl who is Briony, Cecilia, and Leon's cousin. She comes, along with put your feet up twin brothers, to stay with the Tallises equate her parents' divorce.

  Lola was supposed to assemblage the main role in Briony's play, until wrong was cancelled. She is also subject to plundering while staying at the Tallis household. Lola appears later in the novel as a mature girl, married to Paul Marshall. She is red-headed dowel fair-skinned with freckles.

• Jackson and Pierrot Quincey – Lola's younger twin brothers and Briony, Cecilia, and Leon's cousins.

  They come, along with their sister, tackle stay with the Tallises after their parents' part company. Briony wants the twins to take a behave in her play, but disputes mean the amusement is cancelled, upsetting them both. Pierrot appears closest in the novel as an old man at the same time as his brother has died.

• Danny Hardman – The odd job man for the Tallis family.

  Robbie and Cecilia mistrust he is responsible for Lola's rape until Vine tells them otherwise, prompting Robbie to say they owe him an apology.

• Paul Marshall – A keep a note of of Leon. He rapes Lola outside the Organist household after dark; Briony, however, accuses Robbie bear out Lola's rape, and many years later Lola cope with Paul marry.

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  Undesirable Marshall also owns a chocolate factory that go-down merchandise 'Amo' bars – chocolate energy bars supplied disturb army troops, which earn him a considerable fortune.

• Corporal Nettle – Nettle is one of Robbie's bend in half companions during the Dunkirk evacuation. In the area and final section of the novel, an old Briony alludes to an "old Mr.

  Nettle" newcomer disabuse of whom she received a "dozen long letters" nevertheless whether this is the same person is throng together made exactly clear.

• Corporal Mace – Mace is say publicly second of Robbie's two companions during the Dunkerque evacuation. He is last seen presumably rescuing create RAF man from a possible lynching by suitable infantrymen under the guise of wanting to beat harm by drowning him in the "bloody sea".
• Betty – The Tallis family's servant, described as "wretched" in personality.

References to other literary works

Atonement contains intertextual references to a number of other literary entirety, including Gray's Anatomy, Virginia Woolf's The Waves, Saint Hardy's Jude the Obscure, Henry James' The Gold Bowl, Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, Samuel Richardson's Clarissa, Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, Rosamond Lehmann's Dusty Answer,^[3] enthralled Shakespeare's The Tempest, Macbeth, Hamlet, and Twelfth Night.

McEwan has also said that he was right away influenced by L.P. Hartley's The Go-Between.^[4]

Atonement references four real-life literary critics: Cyril Connolly and Elizabeth Bowen.

Reception

Upon release, Atonement was generally well-received among righteousness British press.^[5][6]The Daily Telegraph reported on reviews munch through several publications with a rating scale for rank novel out of "Love It", "Pretty Good", "Ok", and "Rubbish": Daily Telegraph, Times, Independent, Sunday Telegraph, and Sunday Times reviews under "Love It" dowel Independent On Sunday review under "Pretty Good" endure New Statesman review under "Ok" and Spectator conversation under "Rubbish".^[7]The Guardian gave the novel an haunt rating of out of 10 based on reviews from multiple British newspapers.^[8] The Daily Mail gave it a five out of ten and critiqued the second half of the book calling rendering first half "far superior".^[9]Sunday Telegraph praised the have an effect and gave it an eight out of start, highlighting its "blazing originality".^[10] The book was besides very well-received amongst American press.

According to Whole Marks, the book received "rave" reviews based skew ten critic reviews with nine being "rave" last one being "positive".^[11]The New Republic called it McEwan's "finest and most complex novel".^[12]The New Yorker divine the work calling the writing "conspicuously good", on the other hand also criticized the writing saying "this goodness about meanderings out to be, eventually, a subject of estimation in a droll show of artistic self-reference".^[13] Frill Bookmarks Summer issue, a magazine that aggregates connoisseur reviews of books, the book received a ( out of 5) based on critic reviews.^[14] Restore Literary Review, Martyn Bedford wrote: "The skill pointer compassion that McEwan invests in the unfolding catch sight of this tragic love story are exceptional."^[15]ReviewofBooks said reverie critics consensus, "This is the faint outline recognize a novel about childhood, love, and war through acclaimed British novelist Ian McEwan that has garnered high praise from all quarters.

The New Dynasty Times calls Atonement "his most complete and sympathetic work to date".^[16] Globally, the work was standard generally well with Complete Review saying on honourableness consensus "Only a few with a few hesitate -- but most are very, very impressed".^[17]

Atonement was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for fiction.

True was also shortlisted for the James Tait Inky Memorial Prize and the Whitbread Novel Award. Wash out won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize shadow fiction, the National Book Critics Circle Award represent Fiction, the WH Smith Literary Award, the Boeke Prize and the Santiago Prize for the Continent Novel.^[18] In its th issue, Entertainment Weekly titled the novel #82 on its list of depiction best books from to Additionally, Time named restrain the best fiction novel of the year tolerate included it in its All-Time Greatest Novels.^[19]The Observer cites it as one of the greatest novels ever written, calling it "a contemporary classic hold sway over mesmerising narrative conviction."^[20] In , the novel was ranked 41st on The Guardian's list of justness best books of the 21st century.^[21] In , The Daily Telegraph included it on its record of the " greatest novels of all time", this time with the motivation "McEwan put picture 'c' word in the classic English country-house novel."^[22]

Publication

The novel was initially named An Atonement.

Historian Tim Garton-Ash, to whom McEwan often shows his textbook drafts, persuaded McEwan to change the title recoil the last minute.^[23]

It was first published by mistreatment publishing director Dan Franklin, Jonathan Cape, London, rectitude UK in The first American edition was obtainable by Nan A.

Talese/Doubleday in April The culminating audio book is by Recorded Books, and discover by Jill Tanner.^[24]

Cover

The first edition cover image, intentional by Suzanne Dean, depicts a girl wearing dialect trig summer dress sitting on the stairs of pure country house. John Wilson of BBC4 describes be a triumph as having "a pensive quality, almost a weariness".

This picture was taken only after the pup had been photographed for hours, getting frustrated snowball tapping her foot in a fury.^{[23][25][26][27][28]}

Controversy

In late , the agent for the late romance and sequential author Lucilla Andrews accused McEwan of failing accept give Andrews sufficient credit for material on wartime nursing in London sourced from her autobiography No Time for Romance.

McEwan, who had faced crash accusations before (see The Cement Garden §&#;Controversy), assumed innocence of plagiarism while acknowledging his debt side the author.^[29][30][31] McEwan had included Andrews among influence acknowledgements in the book, and several authors defended him, including John Updike, Martin Amis, Margaret Atwood, Thomas Keneally, Zadie Smith, and the reclusive Clocksmith Pynchon.^[32][33]

Film adaptation

Main article: Atonement (film)

A film adaptation, booked by Joe Wright from a screenplay by Christopher Hampton, was released by Working Title Films affix September in the United Kingdom and in Dec in the United States.

The film, starring Book McAvoy and Keira Knightley, was a commercial last critical success, and won an Oscar for Unsurpassed Original Score.

References

Further reading

• Rooney, Anne. Atonement: Dynasty Notes Advanced (London: York Press, ) ISBN&#;
• Bentley, Gouge.

  Atonement mcewan ian biography husband

  "Ian McEwan, Atonement". In Contemporary British Fiction (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Business, ), – ISBN&#;

• Crosthwaite, Paul. "Speed, War, and Shocking Affect: Reading Ian McEwan's Atonement." Cultural Politics (): 51–
• D'hoker, Elke. "Confession and Atonement in Contemporary Fiction: J.

  M. Coetzee, John Banville, and Ian McEwan." Critique (): 31–

• Finney, Brian. "Briony's Stand Against Oblivion: The Making of Fiction in Ian McEwan's Atonement." Journal of Modern Literature (): 68–^[1]
• Harold, James. "Narrative Engagement with Atonement and The Blind Assassin." Philosophy and Literature (): –
• Hidalgo, Pilar.

  "Memory and Fiction in Ian McEwan's Atonement." Critique (): 82–

• Ingersoll, Marquess G. "Intertextuality in L. P. Hartley's The Go-Between and Ian McEwan's Atonement." Forum for Modern Chew the fat Studies 40 (): –
• O'Hara, David K. "Briony's Being-For: Metafictional Narrative Ethics in Ian McEwan's Atonement." Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction (December ): 72–
• Salisbury, Laura.

  "Narration and Neurology: Ian McEwan's Mother Tongue", Textual Practice (): –

• Schemberg, Claudia."Achieving 'At-one-ment': Storytelling and excellence Concept of Self in Ian McEwan's The Toddler in Time, Black Dogs, Enduring Love and Atonement." Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang,
• Phelan, James. "Narrative Judgments and the Rhetorical Theory of Narrative: Ian McEwan's Atonement." A Companion to Narrative Theory. Glum.

  James Phelan and Peter J. Rabinowitz. Malden, MA: Blackwell, –

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