Description:
Ian McEwan's novel Atonement is centered around one day
in the summer of 1935. Briony Tallis, a 13-year-old with an overactive
imagination, witnesses an incident between Cecilia, her older sister,
and Robbie Turner, the neighbor’s son. Startled by the sexual
overtones of what she has seen, it becomes easy for her to believe that
the shadowy figure whom assaults her cousin Lola late that night is
Robbie. Briony's testimony sends Robbie to prison and, through an early
release, into the army on the eve of World War II. Gradually understanding
what she has done, Briony seeks atonement first through a career in
nursing and then through writing, with the novel itself framed as a
literary confession.
Our panel:
Nancy Pearl
Buffy Martin
Pat Barker
Diana Pugh
Links
for this book:
The
London Review of Books
New York Observer
Baltimore
City Paper Online
Also
by this author:
Amsterdam;
Alfred A. Knopf; October 1999
Enduring Love; Alfred A. Knopf; December 1998
The Comfort of Strangers; Random House, Incorporated; October
1994
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