Atonement By Ian McEwan

Part one
The story opens on a hot summer day in 1935. Precocious but naive aspiring writer Briony Tallis, aged 13, has written a play for her brother Leon, with the characters to be played by her cousins, 15-year old Lola and 9-year old twins Jackson and Pierrot. Briony's sister, 23-year old Cecilia Tallis, has returned home from Girton College, Cambridge, and is confronting her confused feelings towards Robbie Turner, son of the housekeeper, whose studies were financed by her father, Jack Tallis and who, like Cecilia, studied literature at Cambridge University.

While trying to water some flowers, the couple break a valuable vase and pieces fall into the fountain. Cecilia strips to her underwear and jumps into the fountain to retrieve the fragments in front of a startled Robbie. Briony witnesses the ensuing moment of sexual tension from an upstairs bedroom and is confused as to its meaning.

Leon Tallis arrives with his friend Paul Marshall, an aspiring businessman who plans to sell chocolate bars to the Army. Leon invites Robbie to dinner, much to Cecilia's annoyance, as she is still confused as to why Robbie disturbs her so much.

Robbie, meanwhile, returns to his bungalow to write a letter to Cecilia. After finishing it, he adds a lewd suggestion on to the bottom, using the word "cunt". Although he then writes another version of the letter to give to Cecilia, it is the first that is inadvertently delivered to Cecilia via Briony, who reads it and is convinced, in her fertile imagination, that Robbie is a "sex maniac".

Upon reading the note, Cecilia realises her love for Robbie, and they declare their love for each other in a heated encounter in the library. Briony interrupts their lovemaking, which she interprets as a sexual assault upon her sister.

During dinner, the twin cousins run away, leaving a letter, and the family party begins searching for them in the extensive grounds of the estate. In the dark, Briony comes across Lola being raped by an unknown attacker. Briony convinces herself that the rapist is Robbie, and Lola acquiesces to this claim.

The police arrive to investigate, and when Robbie arrives with the rescued twins, he is arrested solely on the basis of Briony's testimony. Apart from Robbie's mother, only Cecilia believes in his innocence.

Part two
Robbie has spent three years in prison before being released on condition of enlistment in the army. Cecilia has trained to become a nurse and has cut off all contact with her family. They have been in contact by letter while Robbie has been in prison and Cecilla has promised that she'll wait for him. On being released and before going to France, he meets Cecilia once; a fleeting half hour spent in awkwardness, but they share a kiss before parting.

In France, the war effort is going badly and the army are retreating to Dunkirk. We follow Robbie and two other soldiers, Nettle and Mace, on their journey to Dunkirk. The event mirrors the real life Dunkirk evacuation of 1940. At the end of part two, Robbie is in Dunkirk, his fate unknown.

Part three
Briony is now working as a trainee nurse in London during the weeks leading up to and following the Dunkirk evacuation. She now believes that it was Paul Marshall who raped Lola in 1935 and feels guilty for accusing Robbie.

In this section, it becomes apparent that Briony sees her nursing work as a kind of atonement; she effectively sent Robbie to a horrible war, and now she has given up her hope of attending university and is nursing soldiers. She takes the exhausting and emotionally draining work, the constant cleaning of stinking bedpans and the sharp discipline under the tyrannical Sister Drummond as a deserved punishment.

In a crucial scene, Briony is called to the bedside of Luc, a young French soldier who is fatally wounded. She consoles him in his last moments by speaking with him in her school French, and he mistakes her for an English girl whom his mother wanted him to marry.

Just before his death Luc asks "Do you love me?" to which Briony answers "Yes"-not only because "no other answer was possible" but also because "for the moment, she did. He was a lovely boy far away from his family and about to die". Afterwards, Briony daydreams about the life she might have had if she had in truth married Luc and gone to live with him and his family. (Later it is briefly mentioned that after the war Briony married a Frenchman named Thierry in Marseilles).

Briony then attends the wedding of her cousin Lola and Paul Marshall but lacks the courage to speak out against the marriage.

She finally tracks down Cecilia, who is also a war-time nurse and is in self-exile from her family over their failure to believe Robbie's innocence. Robbie, on leave from the army, is with Cecilia at the time. The two are still furious at guilt-ridden Briony, who tells them that she will try to atone for what she did, and promises to begin the legal procedures needed to exonerate Robbie.

Part four
The fourth section, titled "London 1999", is written from the perspective of Briony, now a successful novelist in her 70s. She is dying from vascular dementia.

It is revealed that she is the author of the preceding sections of the novel, which are to be published only after the deaths of Lola and Paul Marshall-who are extremely rich and respectable, and are in the habit of launching libel suits against any publication presenting them in a negative light.

In the last few pages, we learn that, although they are reunited in Briony's novel, Cecilia and Robbie were never reunited in reality: Robbie died of septicemia on the beaches of Dunkirk (most likely a result of infection from a piece of shrapnel which embeds itself in his stomach and that is mentioned many times during Part Two); and Cecilia was killed at the bombing of the Balham tube station, a well-known disastrous incident of The Blitz.

Though the detail concerning Lola's marriage to Paul Marshall is true, and though Briony's narrative is evasive, it seems that she never visited Cecilia, who was mourning Robbie's death, in an effort to make amends for her lie.

The novel ends with a meditation on the nature of atonement and authorship. The conclusion that Briony appears to reach is that no amount of authorial fantasizing (or, for that matter, wretched work as a nurse) can actually atone for the crime she committed as a child of 13.

The ending attempts to consider differing forms of fiction-both lies in reality and in novels-and suggests that while the one can be irrevocably destructive, the other can offer a chance at happiness unachievable in life.

In the actual novel written by Ian McEwan, the reader knows that in fact Cecilia and Robbie died tragically and were never reunited, and that Briony was haunted all her life by having irreversibly deprived them of their chance for happiness. However, Briony chooses to end her novel (written within McEwan's) with part 3, wherein the two lovers survive the war and embark on a happy life together.

In fact, at the book's final paragraph, Briony contemplates adding a last chapter to her novel, in which Cecilia and Robbie would be present at her seventy-seventh birthday ceremony-"still alive, still in love"-with their presence indicating that at long last they had forgiven her. But it is left unclear whether she ever actually wrote such a final chapter.

Read the rest of the article on Wikipedia - Atonement By Ian McEwan

Briony Tallis - the central character of the book. The story follows her from the age of 13 to old age. Her parents are rich and live in a large mansion. She is an aspiring writer at the start of the book, trains as a nurse during World War 2 and is a successful novelist in later life

Cecilia Tallis - Briony's older sister, a university student who becomes a nurse during World War 2

Leon Tallis - Briony's older brother who she idolises

Emily Tallis - Briony's mother

Jack Tallis - Briony's father

Robbie Turner - friend of Cecilia and son of the Tallis's housekeeper, his education is financed by Briony's father. He is a close friend of Cecilia's and is secretly in love with her. He is wrongly accused of raping Lola and goes to jail, He is released from jail during World War 2 to allow him to enlist as a soldier in the army. He is seriously wounded at the battle of Dunkirk

Mrs Turner - Robbie's mother, the Tallis family's housekeeper

Lola - Briony's cousin who comes to stay with Briony's family after her parents divorce

Jackson and Pierrot - Briony's cousins - Lola's younger twin brothers

Paul Marshall - Friend of Leon's, a businessman who rapes Lola but later marries her

Nettle - A soldier who is one of Robbie's companions during the Dunkirk evacuation

Mace - A soldier who is one of Robbie's companions during the Dunkirk evacuation

Atonement was shortlisted for;

The Booker Prize (2001)
James Tait Black Memorial Prize (2001)
Whitbread Book Award (2001)

Atonement won the following awards;

Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction (2002)
National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction (2002)
WH Smith Literary Award (2002)
Santiago Prize for the European Novel (2004)

2007 film adaptation of the novel Atonement directed by Joe Wright, and based on a screenplay by Christopher Hampton, starring James McAvoy and Keira Knightley.

7 Golden Globe nominations, more than any other film nominated for the 65th Golden Globe Awards

Won 2 Golden Globes, including Best Motion Picture Drama.

14 BAFTA nominations for the 61st British Academy Film Awards including Best Film, Best British Film and Best Director

Nominated for seven Oscars for the 80th Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay) and Best Supporting Actress

Won an Oscar for the Best Original Score

Won the Best Film of the Year, and the Production Design award at the 61st British Academy Film Awards

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