From reading to seeing McEwan's Atonement

Years ago, while wandering a bookstore, I was drawn to a trade paperback of Ian McEwan’s Atonement, displayed face-out on the shelf. At the time, I was grappling with the very theme of atonement in my own work-in-progress. Then, there was the cover art, like a snapshot from my childhood—a black and white picture of a forlorn barefoot girl, lost in thought. Opening the book, I found a quote from Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen’s tale of a girl with a vividly gothic imagination and Ian McEwan’s promise to his readers about the tale he would unfold. Turning the page, I met his imaginative young character, Briony Tallis, and blushed as if I were reading an episode of my own life story—the budding playwright in pre-adolescence, believing she has created serious drama, presenting her manuscript to her mother, and cherishing her mother’s praise. Embarrassed and enthralled, I fell into the story.

Of course, when a reader admires a novel as much as I do Atonement, that reader may hesitate, as I did, to see the movie version. But now that I have seen it, my advice to hesitant booklovers is: buy a ticket, settle back in a darkened theater, and savor director Joe Wright’s lush film depiction of the novel’s time, place, and shattering emotions.

The story of Atonement begins in 1935 at a lavish country manor in England. Young Briony witnesses and misinterprets a few moments shared between her older sister Cecilia and a servant’s son, Robbie, setting in motion the tragic consequences for which Briony atones. Or does she? When someone asks me what the book is about, I find no easy, jacket-blurb sort of answer. McEwan’s writing offers layer upon layer of nuance and meaning. Shifting points of view reveal the shifting nature of truth. A film version of such a complex novel necessarily omits some layers and compresses some events. Still, screenwriter Christopher Hampton’s adaptation of Atonement, Wright’s direction, and the cast’s superb performances capture the haunting beauty of the novel in a film that is a work of art in its own right. Kiera Knightly and James McAvoy portray Cecilia and Robbie, the lovers caught in the amber of Briony’s imagination as she, herself, ages from a privileged child (Saoirse Ronon) to a troubled young woman (Romola Garai) serving as a nurse in World War II, and, finally, to an aging novelist (Vanessa Redgrave) reflecting on her career.

In one segment of the novel omitted from the film, aspiring-writer Briony receives her first rejection letter. Like the book’s opening paragraph, that letter touched my writer’s nerve with a shock of recognition. Hadn’t I once received that letter, too? Among the fictitious editor’s comments to Briony is a recommendation to go beyond the “crystalline present moment” and set her characters in motion with “an underlying pull of simple narrative.” As a far from simple, multi-faceted story of concealment and revelation, Atonement, both in book and film, honors the editor’s advice, moving beyond the cowardice of stylish evasions and bravely laying bare the characters’ hearts.