Atonement

Atonement. McEwan, Ian. New York: Anchor Books, 2001.

This book had a lot to live up to when I began reading it. I saw the very loyal film adaptation a few months ago and the preceding reviews of this novel affirm that McEwan will be part of the classical canon for years to come. I don't necessarily disagree with that opinion. Yet the film, good as it is, takes away quite a bit of the excitement found in the crucial scenes of the novel. In some cases, the book even disappoints in comparison with the film. For example, the death of one of the characters in a Underground station during the war is mentioned in an almost offhand way in the novel while the film depicts the scene in slow motion.

But I am getting ahead of myself. I do not intend to write about how the movie and book differ because — with the inevitable exceptions — they really do not all that much. This is a story about a young girl and aspiring writer who is presented with the opportunity of fashioning her own world dramatically just as in her stories, which she takes. However, the consequences of this fashioning are tragic and unyielding. I do not wish to go into further detail about the plot for risk of spoiling it for any potential readers out there.

The attention to detail here is extraordinary. You can tell quite easily that McEwan is very familiar with Virginia Woolf. The experience of reality; of multiple realities is much at work here. I mean this particularly in the vase scene by the fountain. There are three different accounts of this scene and none of them are "correct." Each contain bits of the observers themselves. Cecilia wants Robbie to love her and therefore entices him into an emotional response by stripping. Robbie wants Cecilia and later fantasizes about her near naked figure. Then there's Briony who is convinced that Robbie has some sort of malignant sexual force that her sister cannot resist. Who is right about this episode? Who is most "realistic"? There is no answer because this is a case of multiple realities. The scene by the fountain is singular because of this and it is one of the precursors to Briony's wrongful accusation.

This is a love story, but it is also a story about how cold those closest to us can be. The only love is shown between Robbie and Cecilia. The consequences of the narrator Briony's action completely divide the family just as the war does. Briony is incapable of love as she has no backbone (her own words). She is still damaged by her terrible mistake and basically hides behind it. The film treats this well if I remember correctly, as Briony (played by the most beautiful woman in the world Romola Garai) remains bashful when discussing potential suitors with her fellow nurse friend. In the novel she fails to return the gaze of the two male nurses (or perhaps doctors I forget) who pass her on the street. Leon seems almost sexless in the early part of the novel even if he ends up marrying in old age (I don't recall exactly). Jack is furthermore distant from his wife and family, with an almost American devotion to his work (which is at least serious on a national defense scale). The relationship between Paul Marshall and Lola is too tainted to be considered loving and at any case McEwan only briefly brings them back to the narrative during the wedding. We never really see if they are happy together or not. Their marriage seems more so a confirmation of their respective guilt than any consensual agreement. Robbie's father leaves home when he is a small child, a further example of a familial love that does not play out. Robbie and Cecilia's love is hardly singular in a general sense (there were probably millions of similar letters passing across the Channel during those days). But within this novel the relationship is singular because they seem to be the only characters who can and do fall in love.

Another intriguing aspect of this novel is the way that the war is depicted. We see no German soldiers. The carnage in Northern France that Robbie witnesses is mostly done through airborne attacks. The British army seem more angry with the hopelessly inept RAF than with the Axis powers. McEwan does a good job of showing the physical discomforts of war. I don't mean sword wounds or rifle shots. Blisters. Shells obliterating human targets; people literally vanquished. Thirst. The sense of everything being completely outside of the limits of reason or control. It's not the tired and pat expectation that Nazi evil must be overcome. There are more tangible thoughts on the minds of McEwan's soldiers; more direct sources of pain than foreign aggressors.

So why is this important you ask? I feel as if American accounts of the war tend to be unlike this. The emphasis is on key victories, rather like you see in textbooks. Certainly Americans are capable of showing the "lighter" sides of war as McEwan does for example when Robbie and Nettle must capture a gypsy woman's pig in exchange for water. It is the home front that really makes the difference. With the exception of Pearl Harbor (itself rather an exception since it was a military base), the war did not directly touch American lives in the same way. Of course it was a difficult time in America too, but in Britain it seemed as if everything had been upended. Gothic houses like that of the Tallises house London refugees. Women who may not have any inclination toward medicine decide to become nurses. The war and the allegation of rape unalterably destroy all the innocence of the blazing hot summer day in 1935 that forms the first part of the novel.

The film took away a bit of the magic of this novel but it was still a pleasurable read.

Welcome

Given that I am at times wholeheartedly aghast at how alienating the world is thanks to technology, the sudden decision to create this blog springs from the aforementioned verb. I write this as I feel myself alienated. I graduated from university a year ago and since then I am still getting used to the fact that I no longer am compelled to discuss literature in my daily life. In fact I rarely discuss it as no one feels like listening (or so I imagine).

The purpose of this blog is for me to get down my thoughts about the dozen or so books that I have read in the last year. I will try my best to restrict myself to literature and not stray into aspects of my private life (as there are enough Twitter egoists out there). I don't have much to say for myself as a person on this blog, but as a reader I hope that there is too little room for me to record my thoughts in each entry. Maybe I will include some of my own writing, maybe not.