On a summer day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses the flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant. But Briony's incomplete grasp of the adult motives and her precocious imagination bring about a crime that will change all their lives, a crime whose repercussions Atonement follows through the chaos and carnage of World War II and into the close of the twentieth century.
Someone said that you only read a book when you reread it. Calvino said that The classics are the books of which we usually hear people say, "I am rereading . . . " and never "I am reading . . . "
I say that this book can't be read just once.
You may be drawn by the love story and that's just fine. Maybe, it's the war description that calls your attention. Even the drama that unfolds one summer night after a little girl tries to comprehend the world beyond her little self. Each part of this book is equally compelling. The whole of it is mesmerizing. I get the feeling that it wants me to come back, to revisit it and discover what lies behind the descriptions, the character's thoughts, actions.
I will.
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Fiction in English
