Book Review- Atonement

Atonement
by Ian McEwan
480 pages
Rating: Tragic and Melancholy. Makes me happy that I don't live in England during World War II. And that I was never falsely imprisoned.

Yes, I read this book in one day. But I think you need to know somethings about me before you are horrible impressed:

1. I still don't have TV. We have it all hooked up, but our old house and faulty wiring doesn't allow the TV to be plugged into a breaker with any other electronics. So I kept tripping the breaker all day today when I was trying to get it to work. So with no TV I had to waste some time. Turns out I can get a lot of reading done when I don't watch TV!!

2. My baby slept so much today. Last night we had a late night going to bed because we were finishing moving the last of the things from the old apartment. We were probably awake until 1:20 in the morning, and then we had to give her a bath, and then feeding, and then bed. So she slept in and then continued to sleep the whole day. I don't know if the heat had something to do with this. Like she wanted to get away from the heat and sleep was the only way to do this. I know I feel that way sometimes. So that is the other reason I had so much time to read.

3. And finally, I'm just a fast reader. I don't know what it is about me. I like sense the words before I actually see them. And I don't really read the words, I let them come into my brain visually. I think everyone does this, but I'm a visual person ANYWAY, so that's how I read. That's why I pronounce words so incorrectly (Lynn, I know you are thinking about the "admonent" situation) I just saw the word for so long, and never had to pronounce it till that day.

Anyway, that's why I was able to read this book so quickly. Plus the fact that it was awesome. I saw the movie that was made out of this book, and for some reason I read the book hoping it would end differently. I don't want to give too much away, but let's just say that it doesn't have the wonderful happy ending that everyone wants.

It's about a young girl who sees her sister and the son of their house lady (who has been her childhood friend forever-he grew up in a house living on their property) involved in a little, um flirtation? Can you call it that? It's more like they were fighting and they didn't know that they liked each other. Which I think is literary bull crap. Of COURSE you know if you like someone!! They just put that in there to be more "romantic" and "English" :)

Anyway the little girl is 13, and she sees her sister of 23 get in a fight with the boy and this vase is broken and a piece drops in the big fountain and the girl in her "unthinking state" strips down to her 1935 underwear (which you can assume is pretty modest compared to underwear these days) and gets in the fountain to get the piece that is lost. She still feels like she's mad at the neighbor boy and only does it to "show" him. Show him what? That she doesn't "need him" or that she's "immodest?" Anyway, in her mind at that time it was a bold move to show him that he may have graduated first in his class at Cambridge (where they both went) but he wasn't better than her.

Why does she think getting in a cold fountain will do this? I don't' know, and neither does she after she thinks about it. She immediately regrets it and is embarrassed to see him again. Well he has been thinking about her in a different way for some time, and the little fountain incident
(actually, I think we can call it an EPISODE) makes him want to tell her how he feels.

He writes a letter. His first draft is somewhat crude. He laughs to himself as he imagines her reading it. He decides to write out the revised letter again. You can guess what happens: He picks up the wrong letter. He doesn't realize it until he asks the young 13 year old to run ahead of him and give the letter to her sister before he gets there. She reads the crude letter. She thinks he's a "maniac" and a sexual deviant and this prejudices her and makes her make a HUGE mistake.

I'm taking too long in this summary, but it's just a great book. It's told from the point of view of the 3 principle characters: Briony, the 13 year old, Robbie the housekeeper's son and Cecelia, the sister of Briony. It's a story about mis-understanding and how "out of the mouth of babes" isn't always a reliable source when someone's life is on the line.

The book takes place in England during the second world war, so right there you know it will be sad. And it is. And I didn't want it to end. Again, I was hoping that it ended differently than the movie. But the movie and the book are very different similar. The movie does a GREAT job of telling the story from the different perspectives of every major character, and we can see how misunderstandings happen. The book does this even more diving into the thoughts of the characters as these things are happening.

Oh, and it's a quick read. Well, if you have a sleeping baby, nothing to distract you and you are a lightning fast reader. Otherwise you can slow-poke it out with the other "average" readers. :)

Oh, and congratulations to Jen (Delahunt) Sanders who got "Love Story" right on the last book review blog. Has no one read that book before? Go and read it, right now. It will make you bawl. If it doesn't, you are heartless and we can't be friends.