Atonement by Ian McEwan

My 16yo daughter just loved this book and suggested I read it. After several attempts, I just couldn't get past the first 10 pages or so. I was returning it to the library, book in hand about to hand it over to the "returns" bin after 3 renewals and only 10 pages, but thought, "I really should give this book one more try." So, I checked it out again and lost myself in its pages. Everything connects back to Outlander, right? And this book did, too, as two of the characters become nurses during WWII; the book gives a fairly good account of what Claire's life during the war was like.

QUESTION: At the very end, the next to last page, now an old woman, Briony admits to creating several drafts:

All of the preceding drafts were pitiless. But now I can no longer think what purpose would be served if, say, I tried to persuade my reader, by direct or indirect means, that Robbie Turner died of septicemia at Bray Dunes on 1 June 1940, or that Cecilia was killed in September of the same year by the bomb that destroyed Balham Underground station. That I never saw them in that year. That my walk across London ended at the church on Clapman Common, and that a cowardly Briony limped back to the hospital, unable to confront her recently bereaved sister. That the letters the lovers wrote are in the archives of the War Museum. How could that constitute an ending? What sense of hope or satisfaction could a reader draw from such an account? Who would want to believe that they never met again, never fulfilled their love? Who would want to believe that, except in the service of bleakest realism? I couldn't do it to them.

Does this mean that the story of Briony meeting with her sister at her apartment, seeing Robbie there, making the arrangements for her recanting ... really didn't happen? That this was only a draft, made to give the reader the hope of a happily ever after for Robbie and Cecilia? But the truth is that Robbie died in France and Cecilia a few months later in the Blitz and Briony never recanted her story, at least to the two to whom it mattered the most.


I found a site ~ BookBrowse with excellent study questions, which suggest a duel ending.

13: About changing the fates of Robbie and Cecilia in her final version of the book, Briony says, "Who would want to believe that the young lovers never met again, never fulfilled their love? Who would want to believe that, except in the service of the bleakest realism?" [p. 350] McEwan’s Atonement has two endings—one in which the fantasy of love is fulfilled, and one in which that fantasy is stripped away. What is the emotional effect of this double ending? Is Briony right in thinking that "it isn’t weakness or evasion, but a final act of kindness, a stand against oblivion and despair, to let my lovers live and to unite them at the end" [p. 351]?

15. In her letters to Robbie, Cecilia quotes from W. H. Auden’s 1939 poem, "In Memory of W. B. Yeats," which includes the line, "Poetry makes nothing happen." In part, the novel explores the question of whether the writing of fiction is not much more than the construction of elaborate entertainments—an indulgence in imaginative play—or whether fiction can bear witness to life and to history, telling its own serious truths. Is Briony’s novel effective, in her own conscience, as an act of atonement? Does the completed novel compel the reader to forgive her?

This book wrecked me. I found myself analyzing every element of Robbie and Cecilia's relationship. Briony wrote the story as a third person narrator and she depicted events she wasn't present for, so we know she made up more than the ending. How much was Robbie and Cecilia's reality, and how much was Briony's projection or imagination? And with Robbie and Cecilia both gone, is Briony's record now a form of their reality? Pondering the existential line between the reality and the fiction had me confounded and captivated for weeks.

I don't know how I'd answer the final question - does the finished novel and the gift of a happy ending truly provide atonement for Briony? Or is it a vain attempt to expunge her guilty conscience? That her chances for true atonement were lost before she achieved the maturity she needed to right her wrong is her tragedy.

Who do you shed more (literal or figurative) tears for - Robbie or Cecilia or Briony?

I think this is my current conundrum. It's a book within a book, so how much is the author's imagination? Did Briony create the entire scenario for the book itself, and it is not really an autobiographical narrative? Do we shift between POVs as it is written, thus seeing Robbie's POV then Claire's, etc., or is it Briony creating those scenes, too.

I am left questioning how much of the story was Briony's "book" and how much of the story was Mr. McEwan's book about the intertwined and tragic five years of Briony, Cecilia, and Robbie (et al). What is real and what is make-believe within a created story?! OY! I could go 'round for weeks!


If Briony's story ends in a tragedy (with Robbie dying, her never seeing Cecilia, and never recanting) can she properly atone through this unpublished work or is it a rehash over and over and over with every re-write and discarded draft? Is her atonement to never be released from the drama of a different ending? Does she go back within her drafts and change her behaviour earlier, thus mitigating her crime, if only on paper?


For me, Robbie. Hands down. I couldn't get into the novel to begin with because I simply could not relate to Briony's character, even though I understood her introspective musings, sometimes too well. But as my daughter told me, those early passages presage Briony's internal machinations, and set the stage (pun intended?) for the unfolding of events.

I was quite surprised when the book went from quaint country manor to BAM! in the middle of a very violently depicted war, which is a direct metaphor for Robbie's life. Cecilia's, too, being the stalwart nurse, attempting to control what she can while the world falls apart around her. And Briony, the author, the muser, forcing herself into a profession as another way of atoning for her crime. Interesting.

Atonement is one of my favourite and I think the one of the most difficult of McKewan's books to rationalise...Briony Tallis is such an unreliable narrator that you are never quite sure of what is meant by her final outcome..Briony herself states "How can a novelist achieve atonement, when with her absolute power of deciding outcomes, she is also God"....

I think my my overwhelming sympathy lay ultimately with Robbie Turner....the depiction of the horror of WW2 is expertly captured in Part Two..

The film version with Keira Knightley and James McAvoy is well worth watching - but I'd recommend that you read the book first !

This is Ian McEwan's profile on Contemporary Writers