Ian McEwan's Atonement

"Briony had her first, weak intimation that for her now it could no longer be fairy-tale castles and princesses, but the strangeness of the here and now, of what passed between people, the ordinary people that she knew, and what power one could have over the other, and how easy it was to get everything wrong, completely wrong."

Those lines above are decisive for everything else that is going to happen in the novel Atonement. Briony Tallis is a 13-year-old girl who is already committed to the life of a writer. The story starts in a hot day in the house of family Tallis, located somewhere beyond London. The romantic minded Briony has written a play - The Trials of Arabella, to welcome her older brother Leon, home. As her 9-year-old twin cousins are coming home due to their parents' split (a scandal in 1935 England), Briony decides to direct the poor things and her 15-year-old ginger-haired cousin Lola on the play, with Briony herself playing the lead character. The first impression you might have of Briony is that she's a spoiled little brat, who annoyingly bosses the poor twins around in endless rehearsals that soon will come out as discouraging, especially when Lola gets the leading role, leaving Briony insecure about the success of her play. Then, she refuses to go on with the act and storms off to her room in tears. But something will happen in between.

From her window, Briony will witness a scene no one else will see in that sultry summer day. In clear lines, she will see her older sister Cecilia who stands on the Triton fountain, undressing to her underwear in front of Robbie Turner, the charlady's son, the boy whose father left earlier and never came back, and whose studies have been sponsored by a generous Mr. Tallis along the years. Robbie has a brilliant future. He wants to go to medical school and nothing seems to stop him on that. Ok. So, suddenly, Cecilia jumps into the fountain bringing back a piece Briony can't clearly see. She witnessed those two figures by the fountain, their acts and facial expressions, but she couldn't hear any of what they said to eachother.

In her fertile imaginative childlike mind, Briony will decide for herself what happened there, it's a turning point in her 13-year-old life. She will misinterpretate what she has seen, she thinks that her poor sister was forced to take her clothes off by that creepy man. From this moment on, the book will get more and more intriguing and it's impossible to stop reading one page after the other.

"This was not a fairy tale, this was the real, the adult world in which frogs did not address princesses, and the only messages were the ones that people sent."

When her big brother Leon arrives with a friend, Paul Marshall, a future millionaire who has recently discovered a formula for chocolate bars, a party is about to begin. Robbie Turner is one of the guests. Once again, Briony will witness alone another scene, this time, in the house's library. She will see her sister making love to Robbie, but please notice, Briony is completely sexually clueless. She thinks the maniac is raping her poor sister. And this time, the two lovers will notice her voyeuristic presence. Now everyone is on the table and dinner is served. In the meanwhile, the twins disappear, they have run away. It's time for leaving the house and looking for the children. It's a hot summer night, the narrative voice never stops mentioning it.

Something more serious will happen. A rape. Lola is raped and Briony is the only one to witness the dark shade of the man who will violate her cousin. She can only hear his moanings. It's the same kind of sound Robbie had made in the library. She's sexually clueless and her writer's imagination is sure of who committed the crime. It was him. It was Robbie. Everyone will believe her. Everyone but Cecilia and Robbie's mother. The lovers are separated. And then, there's time to war. I confess the war lines lacked the same quality as the rest of the book. Sometimes, it even bored me a little, but everything else, with its mix of drama, psychologícal development and thrilling curiosity caught me. Don't get me wrong, i'm very interested in anything that concerns WW2, but in this case, the war itself is nothing but a period of time McEwan will use to develop his narrative and characters.

Written purposely through a self-conscious voice, Atonement is one of the most interesting, well-developed, brilliant, original and nevertheless, greatest novels i've ever read. As many of you know at this point, the book has been adapted to the big screen, and has already premiered for a very selected audience. Something tells me that this film will lack the book's greatness, but let's see.