Atonement
By Ian McEwan
Doubleday, $26
ISBN 0385503954

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Making amends for a childhood sin

Ian McEwan, author of the 1998 Booker Prize-winning novel Amsterdam, has written an ambitious story spanning more than 60 years, a tale revolving around a childhood sin and the attempts to expiate it. The first half of the novel is set in 1935 on the Tallis family's country estate outside London. Thirteen-year-old Briony's lively imagination is amply demonstrated by her proclivity to pen and direct plays viewed by her family. Her older sister Cecilia has just graduated from Cambridge, and Leon, the eldest child, gallivants around with budding entrepreneurs.

Life at the Tallis manse is savagely interrupted when a female cousin is assaulted one evening. For reasons that form the basis of the novel's exploration of guilt and blame, Briony claims to have witnessed the act and accuses Robbie Turner, son of the family housekeeper, of the crime. Further complicating the situation is the fact that Mr. Tallis served as Robbie's academic patron, paying for his grammar school tuition and subsidizing his subsequent education at Oxford.

The battlefields of France during the early phases of World War II abruptly introduce the novel's second half. An emancipated Robbie Turner, now a wounded soldier in the British Army, stumbles towards Dunkirk, experiencing the German onslaught and devastation. McEwan writes starkly of the disheveled, frenzied retreat to the coast, filtering events through Turner's perceptive eyes. Even as chaos reigns amid the mutilated bodies, Turner remains focused on Cecilia, the woman he loves; he lets her passionate letters sustain him during this terrifying ordeal. As he waits at Dunkirk to be evacuated, the narrative shifts to 18-year-old Briony, now in London. The novel chronicles her bleak, austere training as a nurse, her childhood sin looming over her the entire time. With a grim determination, she works in preparation for a flood of casualties from the Continent, always hoping for a rapprochement with her sister, who spurned Briony after her false testimony.

McEwan skillfully weaves these multiple voices together, creating a seamless story. Though the novel's plot is sparked by a terrible transgression, this narrative ultimately emerges as a hopeful tale about families and our ability to atone for our errors.