NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARDEE, 2002
It was a hot day in 1935, in a countryside in England, at the brink of World War II. The day was opened with enthusiasm and closed by a crime, which sixty-four years later is still being atoned by the culprit.
Ian McEwan’s book, Atonement, while written exquisitely, is a page turner; and to my surprise, and much delight, at the end, I realized that the book used a metanarrative technique, a narrative that explains its narrative. The book itself is the atonement, part of the atonement, or perhaps, trying to be the instrument of the atonement.
Indeed, this is a supreme example of contemporary literature, written at the pinnacle of the writer’s narrative power, conjuring complex, expansive scope of guilt, shame, betrayal, and love, amid war and carnage.