kyhryt

** spoiler alert ** A masterpiece. A friend of mine said she didn't like the ending, but I think that the ending was the best part. I believe that for every story, there is a perfect ending. I can almost visualize it, like a golden thread, the perfect way for a story to conclude. Stories that deviate from this path are flawed and end up feeling overly saccharine or unsatisfyingly trite. Briony's story of Cecelia and Robbie follows the thread well. It's an excellent, engaging tale of thwarted romance. However, it is easy to get wrapped up in the love story and forget that Briony is really the main character of Atonement. The title is there to remind you- this book is about how a person ruins the lives of two people she loves and how she copes with that. The final section reveals that Briony has concocted the entire story of Robbie and Cecelia to satisfy her own needs, but it also brings out a point about the difference between stories and life. Briony's book follows the thread (the young lovers get reunited, Briony achieves some sense of atonement); Briony's own story follows the thread (an author creates atonement through reimagining her past); but there is no thread for Robbie and Cecelia. Their lives are cut short senselessly, with no greater sense of narrative, outside of the way Briony takes them into her own life story. So here's what makes the McEwan's book brilliant: It asks, is there a greater narrative structure to life? Is that something we imagine for ourselves so we can acheive our own atonements, and living is nothing beyond circumstances and accidents? Or it is true, all the stories we tell ourselves about personal evolutions, journeys of the soul, etc? The only real problem I had with the book is that I kept imagining Cecelia as Keira Knightly. And I haven't even seen the movie!

2022-11-14 17:15