Atonement Book Review
at last! i finished this book. yes, it took a bit longer than i had anticipated but i think i was deliberately reading slowly so as to savour every word. it's beautifully written and it was a really enjoyable read, very atmospheric, almost filmic in style.
confession, i have never read any of mcewan's books before and i think i chose this title precisely because of that but also i love books about world war 1 and 2. these wars in particular had such an impact on society and everything changed which i find fascinating to read about.
you might criticize this book's pace as it did seem slow at first but i would argue that it was essential to set the scene, deliberately building up the expectation of the crime. we sense something big is going to happen and is the main theme of the work but i loved the unexpected turn this book took, i hate being able to predict the ending.
this book has definitely whetted my appetite for more mcewan novels although some reviews i read briefly seem to suggest that this is not a typical mcewan novel, any thoughts?
posted by fivespice @ Tuesday, November 06, 2007
8 Comments:
i loved Saturday by McEwan tho' On Chisel Beach was less entreaging i also really enjoyed enduring Love but Saturday is the pick I will seek out Atonement soon on your recommendation.
Sounds like a good read maybe I should pick it up.
i forgot to mention that the next book we are reading is The Whaleboat House by Mark Mills. although i am currently reading Deportees by Roddy Doyle so may well write a review on that too.
I really enjoyed this book, granted it’s a little slow to begin with, but I picked up my mum’s copy when I was back in the UK so she had warned me in advance.
The chapters when Robbie went to war were for me the most fascinating (I guess I also have a morbid curiosity about the Wars…), though I was half expecting to find that Robbie died in France & would have been disappointed with the book if that had been the case. However I loved the descriptions of SW London, I’m not sure where McEwan is from but Enduring Love which I’d read a couple of months back is also based in Earlsfield/Clapham way, so I did start to feel quite homesick! I would definitely recommend this book, & more so than Enduring Love.
You'll be pleased to know I managed to get hold of a copy of The Whaleboat House this week, though just finishing a sneaky inbetweener, Jon Krakauer's morbidly fansinating book about the Mormons (only picked it up 'cause I love the author, but I can highly recommend it!)
I originally bought this book when it first came out in hardback (not something I normally do, it must have been on special offer or something). I had previously read some other books by McEwan which I had really enjoyed, but found this book to be very slow-going and not what I expected, so gave up after about 100 pages. My hardback edition didn't give any clues that the story was about to get interesting, and I hadn't read any reviews on the book - so I didn't know what I was missing. I then read a book review this summer and thought the book sounded good, time to blow off the dust and give it another go... well, I still found the first 100 pages very slow. (It may be beautiful writing, but I found all the talk of 'parallelograms of light' a bit too tedious). But then the plot picked up (literally the page after I gave up on it first time round), and the pace got much better too - I loved the book from that point onwards.
It is very different from his other books (I read Amsterdam a long time ago, and some other ones but not sure which ones now) - my favourite so far is Saturday which is well worth a read (if you've only read Atonement, you wouldn't realise it's written by the same author).
well i'm glad we all liked the book. ian mcewan was born in aldershot and studied in sussex and east anglia.
i see you can buy a York's Notes on Atonement!
i don't normally enjoy dense descriptive passages but, for some peculiar reason, i enjoyed these. normally i'm a strictly skip-to-the-action-and-stop-blabbering- type of girl.
well, i think we should toast the successful launch of our new online book club. champagne anyone?
champagne sounds good to me! I must say, the first 100 pages did seem awfully like an 0-level text, so not surprised there's a York notes on it already. But a good choice louise, I'm glad I saw this one through.
Unfortunately I read the Whaleboat house a good 6 weeks ago now (and have read a few books since) but will try to refresh myself what it was all about, then write something in here...
I have just started reading The Thirteenth Tale - can't remember the author but think it's in 'the charts' at the moment. I'm quite enjoying it so far (just 20 pages in though). I'm waiting to read Nic's choice until you both are ready to start too - so that I'm not always 3 months ahead and can never remember anything.
good idea. i have just started the whaleboat house by mark mills which is the next book, for those who are interested so should be finished soon. if it helps to remind you, a woman's body has been fished out of the sea by a basque fisherman called conrad.
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