Atonement

A young girl sees her older sister and a man in a situation she doesn't understand, and subsequently makes an accusation that changes the course of all three lives. This is a study of a life-long search for forgiveness and atonement. McEwan is at his best here. An amazing and excellent book! Recommended By Dianah H., Powells.com

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.

"Atonement...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." Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"Flat-out brilliant....Lush, detailed, vibrantly colored and intense." San Francisco Chronicle

"His most complete and passionate book to date." The New York Times Book Review

"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....Gorgeous....Bewitching....A thought-provoking, luxuriant novel." Minneapolis Star Tribune

"[McEwan's] best novel so far....It will break your heart." The Star (Toronto)

"The extraordinary range of Atonement suggests that there's nothing McEwan can't do." The Christian Science Monitor

"Magnificent....Suspenseful, psychologically astute and intellectually bracing." Newsday

"The dust jacket proclaims Atonement [McEwan's] finest achievement, and although publishers are prone to this...view of their authors' talents, in this case they are triumphantly right." Robert MacFarlane, The Times Literary Supplement (London)

"McEwan's latest, both powerful and exquisite, considers...the dangers and rewards of imagination, and the juncture between innocence and awareness, all set against the late afternoon of an England soon to disappear." Kirkus Reviews

"Readers are spared little, yet the journey is worth the observed pain and distress. Well-read teens will find much to think about in this novel." School Library Journal

"[A] master of psychologically acute and elegantly gothic tales...polished and entrancing....[McEwan] excels brilliantly at depicting moral dilemmas and stressed minds in action." Donna Seaman, Booklist

Ian McEwan is the bestselling author of more than ten books, including the novels The Comfort of Strangers and Black Dogs, both shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Amsterdam, winner of the Booker Prize, and The Child in Time, winner of the Whitbread Award, as well as the story collections First Love, Last Rites, winner of the Somerset Maugham Award, and In Between the Sheets. He has also written screenplays, plays, television scripts, a childrens book, and the libretto for an oratorio. He lives in London.