Atonement by Ian McEwan

 

I find myself deeply ambivalent about this novel. Most of the first part was tedious. The bits on the way to Dunkirk and in a homefront hospital were gritty and intense and really good. To the extent the second part made the first part worth the slog, McEwan undercuts it with a metatextual rugpull at the end and into the epilogue. The novel isn't about an atonement that happens, it's about one that doesn't, one that can't--this is fine, there are things that cannot be undone, severings that cannot be mended; and the ending hits kinda hard, the rugpull stings. But it's still a rugpull, and it drags most of the novel (I'm unclear on the extent to which that sloggy first part is supposed to have been written by a character in the novel) from the realm of fiction to the realm of lies. I hate being lied to.