Ian McEwan’s symphonic novel of love and war, childhood and
class, guilt and forgiveness provides all the satisfaction of a
brilliant narrative and the provocation we have come to expect from
this master of English prose.
On a hot summer day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis
witnesses a moment’s flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia,
and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant and Cecilia’s childhood
friend. But Briony’s incomplete grasp of adult motives–together
with her precocious literary gifts–brings about a crime that will
change all their lives. As it follows that crime’s repercussions
through the chaos and carnage of World War II and into the close of
the twentieth century, Atonement engages the reader on every
conceivable level, with an ease and authority that mark it as a
genuine masterpiece.