For about an hour, I listened to the audiobook and followed along in the book. I couldn't get into it. So I dropped the audiobook and started over from page 1. Relying only on the book, I loved it!Hard to believe that the same author wrote Lessons (which was horrible by the way)!This is a captivating story about two young lovers pulled apart during World War II because of an event.BBC's Top 100 Books You Need to Read Before You Die https://www.listchallenges.com/bbcs-t...The Green Light at the E...

O fată de 13 ani, Briony Tallis, comite un păcat: mărturisește strîmb la un proces (vrea să se înșele și e ajutată să se înșele). Din cauza ei un tînăr, Robbie Turner, ajunge în închisoare (deși nu are nici o vină) și, de acolo, în război unde este rănit, face o septicemie și moare / nu moare. Briony distruge viața tînărului și pe a surorii sale, Cecilia. Își înțelege într-un tîrziu greșeala: nu există cale de întoarcere, timpul nu poate fi dat înapoi. Nimeni nu e în stare să rescrie istoria, ni...

A spiteful, scheming and vindicative sister, or a naïve, overimaginative, and pubescent teenager, who did something unforgivable?My first time reading this, I believed Briony to be the former. A clear case of sister rivalry and jealousy that led Briony to make deplorable accusations about her sister, Cecelia’s, boyfriend that would change the course of her sister’s life, and his forever. On reading the second time, I am inclined to be more open-minded to the cause but not the effect and the need...

Wow! I will embarrassedly share a personal secret. Actually it’s not personal! It’s about the actress and the bloody intense movie adaptation of this book. I am a big fan of charming Scottish Mr. McAvoy (In my opinion not Idi Amin but he’s the real king of Scotland!) so after watching so young but intimidating Saoirse Ronan as thirteen years old Briony Tallis and witnessed how she ruined her own sister Cecilia (Keira Knightley ) and Robbie ( played by magnificent McAvoy) the son of the servant, ...

Read as part of The Infinite Variety Reading Challenge, based on the BBC's Big Read Poll of 2003. The cost of oblivious daydreaming was always this moment of return, the realignment with what had been before and now seemed a little worse. In the heat of a 1930s Summer, a family reunites at their country home for what may be the last time. Cousins have come to stay, a sister has returned from University and a brother is returning from America with a new friend in tow. Briony, the only child lef...

Atonement is a story of moral issues and the story is sad…Here she was, offering a possibility of absolution. But it was not for him. He had done nothing wrong. It was for herself, for her own crime which her conscience could no longer bear. Was he supposed to feel grateful? And yes, of course, she was a child in 1935. He had told himself, he and Cecilia had told each other, over and again. Yes, she was just a child. But not every child sends a man to prison with a lie. Not every child is so pur...

There are many reviews already of this book, and I did wonder whether the world needed any more. But I disagree so strongly with some of the opinions expressed that I'm afraid I have to exercise my right to reply. Two things in particular stand out. Let me deal with the simpler one first. Some people seem appalled that the author is putting the guilt for this dreadful tragedy on the shoulders of a young girl. She didn't know what she was doing, they say; she was too young to understand the impor...

Ian McEwan - image from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette - photo credit: Joost van den Broek I was bored with this until half way through, but then it got interesting. It touches on imagination versus reality, fiction versus fact, in addition to the story content. A portrait of an upper middle class English family is interrupted by a supposed rape in which a young imaginative (vengeful) girl misidentifies the rapist. I found that it stayed with me and that I appreciated it more with time. The film, r...

In World War II England, 13-year-old Briony Tallis misinterprets her older sister’s love affair with their family’s gardener to be something much worse than what it is. Her innocence and partial understanding of the world begins a chain of events that tears the family apart and alters the course of the rest of the girl’s life.Sounds a little dry, right? Wrong! I guess I forgot to mention that the book was written by Ian McEwan, the king of uncomfortable moments, weird sex stuff, the rotating thi...

That I can remember, I've never before disliked the start of a book so thoroughly, and by the end, gone on to think so much of it as a complete work.The last 2/3 of this novel are as good as contemporary fiction gets. The first 1/3 is like reading a Jane Austen plot trapped in amber.As the title indicates Atonement is about a future artist's massive effort to redeem herself for ruining the character of a young man when she is a younger girl. There are parts of this novel that are disjointed - or...