E-book
Atonement [electronic resource] : a novel / Ian McEwan.
On the hottest day of the summer of 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis sees her sister, Cecilia, strip off her clothes and plunge into the fountain in the garden of their country house. Watching her is Robbie Turner, her childhood friend who, like Cecilia, has recently come down from Cambridge. By the end of that day, the lives of all three will have been changed forever. Robbie and Cecilia will have crossed a boundary they had not even imagined at its start, and will have become victims of the younger girl's imagination. Briony will have witnessed mysteries and committed a crime that creates in her a sense of guilt that will color her entire life. Ian McEwan has in each of his novels drawn the reader brilliantly into the intimate lives and situations of his characters. But never before has he written on a canvas so large: taking the reader from a manor house in England in 1935, to the retreat to Dunkirk in 1941, to a London hospital soon after where the maimed, broken, and dying soldiers are shipped from the evacuation, to a reunion of the Tallis clan in 1999. Atonement is Ian McEwan's finest achievement. Brilliant and utterly enthralling in its depiction of childhood, love and war. England and class, it is at its center a profound-and profoundly moving-exploration of shame and forgiveness, of atonement and the difficulty of absolution.
Record details
- ISBN: 9781400075553 (electronic bk.)
- ISBN: 1400075556 (electronic bk.)
- ISBN: 9780307371492 (electronic bk.)
- ISBN: 0307371492 (electronic bk.)
- Physical Description: 1 online resource (351 p.)
- Edition: 1st ed. in the U.S.A.
- Publisher: New York : N.A. Talese/Doubleday, 2002, c2001.
Search for related items by subject
| Subject: | Teenage girls > Fiction. Country life > Fiction. Ex-convicts > Fiction. England > Fiction. Sisters > Fiction. Guilt > Fiction. Literary |
| Genre: | Psychological fiction. Domestic fiction. Electronic books. Psychological fiction. Domestic fiction. |
Other Formats and Editions
Electronic resources
- Baker & Taylor
The Booker Prize-winning author ofAmsterdam creates a richly textured coming-of-age novel, set in 1935 England, that follows thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis, who witness an event involving her sister Cecilia and her childhood friend Robbie Turner, as she becomes the victim of her own imagination, which tears her family apart and leads her on a lifelong search of truth and absolution. Reader's Guide available. Reprint. 300,000 first printing. - Random House, Inc.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER ⢠A symphonic novel of love and war, childhood and class, guilt and forgiveness that provides all the satisfaction of a brilliant narrative and the provocation we have come to expect from the acclaimed Booker Prizeâwinning, internationally bestselling author.
One of the New York Timesâs 100 Best Books of the 21st Century
âA beautiful and majestic fictional panorama.â âJohn Updike, The New Yorker
On a hot summer day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses a momentâs flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant and Ceciliaâs childhood friend. But Brionyâs incomplete grasp of adult motivesâtogether with her precocious literary giftsâbrings about a crime that will change all their lives.
As it follows that crimeâs 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. - Random House, Inc.
The novel opens on a sweltering summer day in 1935 at the Tallis familyâs mansion in the Surrey countryside. Thirteen-year-old Briony has written a play in honor of the visit of her adored older brother Leon; other guests include her three young cousins -- refugees from their parentâs marital breakup -- Leonâs friend Paul Marshall, the manufacturer of a chocolate bar called âAmoâ that soldiers will be able to carry into war, and Robbie Turner, the son of the family charlady whose brilliantly successful college career has been funded by Mr. Tallis. Jack Tallis is absent from the gathering; he spends most of his time in London at the War Ministry and with his mistress. His wife Emily is a semi-invalid, nursing chronic migraine headaches. Their elder daughter Cecilia is also present; she has just graduated from Cambridge and is at home for the summer, restless and yearning for her life to really begin. Rehearsals for Brionyâs play arenât going well; her cousin Lola has stolen the starring role, the twin boys canât speak the lines properly, and Briony suddenly realizes that her destiny is to be a novelist, not a dramatist. In the midst of the long hot afternoon, Briony happens to be watching from a window when Cecilia strips off her clothes and plunges into the fountain on the lawn as Robbie looks on. Later that evening, Briony thinks she sees Robbie attacking Cecilia in the library, she reads a note meant for Cecilia, her cousin Lola is sexually assaulted, and she makes an accusation that she will repent for the rest of her life. The next two parts of Atonement shift to the spring of 1940 as Hitlerâs forces are sweeping across the Low Countries and into France. Robbie Turner, wounded, joins the disastrous British retreat to Dunkirk. Instead of going up to Cambridge to begin her studies, Briony has become a nurse in one of Londonâs military hospitals. The fourth and final section takes place in 1999, as Briony celebrates her 77th birthday with the completion of a book about the events of 1935 and 1940, a novel called Atonement . In its broad historical framework Atonement is a departure from McEwanâs earlier work, and he loads the story with an emotional intensity and a gripping plot reminiscent of the best nineteenth-century fiction. Brilliant and utterly enthralling in its depiction of childhood, love and war, England and class, the novel is a profoundly moving exploration of shame and forgiveness and the difficulty of absolution. From the Trade Paperback edition.
