Synopsis
ATONEMENT, which Ian McEwan has called his "Jane Austen novel," is divided into three sections, reaching from the first chapter, set in 1935, to a startling coda in the early 2000s. In between is wartime Europe and a group of nurses tending to wounded soldiers; this section also describes the aftermath of the battle of Dunkirk, in which McEwan's father fought. (McEwan gives his father, who died just before ATONEMENT was published, a walk-on part.) The story revolves around a disastrous misunderstanding by a young teenage girl, which leads to a tragic series of events that culminate in a stunning surprise ending. ATONEMENT was short-listed for the 2001 Booker Prize. A New York Times "Editor's Choice" for 2002.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 2003-02-01 | | Edition Description: | Reprint |
| Size | | Length: | 351 pages | | Height: | 8.0 in | | Width: | 5.3 in | | Thickness: | 0.8 in | | Weight: | 9.6 oz |
Publisher's Note
“A beautiful and majestic fictional panorama.” --John Updike, The New Yorker
“Flat-out brilliant. . . . Lush, detailed, vibrantly colored and intense.” –San Francisco Chronicle
“A tour de force. . . . Every bit as affecting as it is gripping.” --Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
“Luminous. . . . Atonement is brilliant and like nothing he’s ever written before.” –Newsweek
“No one now writing fiction in the English language surpasses Ian McEwan.” –The Washington Post Book World
“Brilliant. . . . McEwan could be the most psychologically astute writer working today, our era’s Jane Austen.” –Esquire
“A work of astonishing depth and humanity.” –The Economist
“His most complete and passionate book to date.” --The New York Times Book Review
“In the seriousness of its intentions and the dazzle of its language, Atonement made me starry-eyed all over again on behalf of literature’s humanizing possibilities.” –Daphne Merkin, Los Angeles Times
“Resplendent. . . . Graceful. . . . Magisterial. . . . Gloriously realized.” –The Boston Sunday Globe
“McEwan is technically at the height of his powers.” –The New York Review of Books
“Astonishing. . . . [with] one of the most remarkable erotic scenes in modern fiction. . . . [It] is something you will never forget.” –Chicago Tribune
“Enthralling. . . . With psychological insight and a command of sensual and historical detail, Mr. McEwan creates an absorbing fictional world.” –The Wall Street Journal
“[Atonement] hauls a defining part of the British literary tradition up to and into the 21st century.” –The Guardian
“Astonishing. . . . Gorgeous. . . . Bewitching. . . . A thought-provoking, luxuriant novel.” –Minneapolis Star Tribune
“McEwan is one of the most gifted literary storytellers alive. . . . [Atonement] implants in the memory a living, flaming presence.” –James Wood, The New Republic
“[McEwan’s] best novel so far. . . . It will break your heart.” –The Star (Toronto)
“A masterpiece of moral inquiry. . . . Beautiful and wrenching.” –New York
“A first-rate novel on any scale. . . . His most expansive and ambitious book. . . . Few, if any, novelists writing today match McEwan in ingenuity and plotting.” –Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“Magnificent. . . . McEwan forces his readers to turn the pages with greater dread and anticipation than does perhaps any other ‘literary’ writer working in English today.” –Claire Messud, The Atlantic Monthly
“The extraordinary range of Atonement suggests that there’s nothing McEwan can’t do.” –The Christian Science Monitor
“Magically readable. . . . Never has McEwan shown himself to be more in sympathy with the vulnerability of the human heart.” –Sunday Times (London)
“Magnificent. . . . Suspenseful, psychologically astute and intellectually bracing.” –Newsday
“Not since the 19th century has a writer stepped in and out of his characters’ minds with such unfettered confidence.” –The Plain Dealer
“A novel of artistry, power and truth that puts it among the most extraordinary works of fiction of the last decade. . . . It is, quite simply, magnificent–a masterpiece.” –Michael Pakenham, The ...
Industry Reviews
"As well as being a superb writer of place, McEwan is also among the finest practitioners of the free indirect style in English, and each phrase in ATONEMENT vibrates with the voice of the character it is so discreetly ventriloquizing....The dust jacket proclaims ATONEMENT his finest achievement, and although publishers are prone to this...view of their authors' talents, in this case they are triumphantly right."
Times Literary Supplement - Robert Macfarlane (09/28/2001)
"Reading McEwan's work, we often find it impossible to slow down, so powerful is the pull of 'What's next?' In ATONEMENT that pull lures us through the first section at breakneck speed, and reasserts its sway in the last. But in the second and third segments of the book a strange and fine thing happens: we are free to linger in the moment, to savor the exquisite, agonizing aptness of McEwan's images and the delicacy of his touch as he records, in fiction, the true horrors of war, and makes new the ordinary realizations those horrors force upon us...."
Atlantic Monthly - Claire Messud (03/01/2002)
"[T]here is nothing self-conscious or mannered about Mr. McEwan's writing. Indeed, ATONEMENT emerges as the author's most deeply felt novel yet--a novel that takes the glittering narrative pyrotechnics perfected in his last book, AMSTERDAM, and employs them in the service of a larger, tragic vision. It is a novel that attests not only to Mr. McEwan's mastery of craft and virtuosic control of narrative suspense, but also to his knowledge of the human heart and its rage for symmetry and order."
New York Times - Michiko Kakutani (03/07/2002)
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