The Atonement

So...to be honest I hadn't even heard of this book until the movie came out - yup, I've been living under a literary rock. Took me quite a while to get into it, but once I did, I couldn't put it down! I even found myself getting strangely annoyed whenever I reached my stop on the tube - a first.

At first I thought it sounded a bit too much like a period drama, which is generally not my cup of tea. But then, out of the blue, you're suddenley presented with the 'C' word - IN CAPS. Average period drama yawn fest this is not!

It's a love story, written from three different perspectives to give you the all round picture. We've got Cecilia and Robbie, our lovers, and Briony (Cecilia's younger sister) who, in a terrible act of childish naivity, commits a crime that will effect all three of their lives in ways she could not have foreseen. It's set in the 1930s and continues through the second world war, right up until 1999 when we're greeted with an aging Briony, still striving for atonement.

The most touching and emotional parts of the novel were, for me, Robbie's desperate journey from France back to England. The vivid descriptions of the war torn country really hit home for me. I felt as though McEwan stripped back all the layers and left us with the raw and tender wounds of the war, right there on the page. Those wounds are not only of the war, they also symbolise the anguish and gut-wrenching pain experienced in their (Robbie and Cecilia) personal lives.

And the ending! One of those bitter sweet endings. Hope and grief, regret and nostalgia, contentment and loss...a perfect recipe which leaves you still wanting more.