I remember reading another book by McEwan, called the Cement Garden, and being greatly impressed by it. The blurb on the back of Atonement said it was his best yet. I can't say, because I have not read the other nine, but this is a clever book.

It is set in England before we had had to start numbering World Wars, (i.e. after the first and before the second). The main protagonist, Briony, is a 13 year old girl, on the cusp of adult life, and anxious to leave her childhood behind. She lives a rather isolated life, being the only child in an upper middle-class family, as both her brother and sister are now adult. They live a life of ease in a large house with extensive grounds, and a couple of servants. The combination of a rare intelligence and loneliness lead young Briony to a precocious creative writing career.

McEwan then shares with us some ideas which must reflect his own experiences as a youth, teaching himself to write... some are technical, some more reflective and philosophical notions that Briony must overcome if she is to succeed. Consider this:

"Even writing out the 'she said' s , and the 'and then's, made her wince, and she felt foolish, appearing to know about the emotions of an imaginary being. Self-exposure was inevitable; the moment she described a character's weakness, the reader was bound to speculate that she was describing herself. What other authority could she have?"

Briony, resourceful kid that she is, has discovered a way around at least all the tiresome repetition. She writes a play. She has a trio of red-headed cousins, one a girl a bit older, and two twin boys a bit younger, who Briony has decided can constitute 75% pf the cast.

There is one section which I found funny, where Briony bewails the fact that the verisimilitude of the drama is jeopardized by two cast members being identical, and nearly all of them freckled.

However, the drawing room drama is not staged on time. Instead a real drama is unfolding and the children's play abandoned... Briony witnesses, at a distance, a curious scene which she is unable to interpret. She sees her sister in the grounds with Robbie, the (adult) son of the cleaning lady. They appear to be arguing, and suddenly Big Sis strips to her underwear, (dear me, in 1935!) and immerses herself in the water of an ornamental fountain, and then dresses quickly, still in front of this young man, and stomps back to the house...trailing water. At last, Briony has a real drama, a mystery, requiring narrative skill, empathy, background details... even as she watches, she is planning how she will later capture it on the inky page.

Late that night Briony, in her anxiety to live in a genuinely dramatic event, makes a terrible allegation about Robbie.

Anyway... I won't spoil the story for you. The first section is well done. It somehow captures the fussy middle-class family of slightly pompous people, with their faintly ridiculous sense of their "station" in life. The children speak as children do... they are not "sweet" children, they are just people, with real emotions and vocabularies.

However, when I got to the end of that bit, I was beginning to think that I did not really want to continue reading about this kid's histrionics in a hot summer in a big house. I looked to see how many more pages were left, and considered abandoning it. However, I was relieved to find that section 2 had an entirely different flavour which rekindled my interest.

The second section is set about 5 years later, when once again Britain and Germany are at war. Robbie survives the retreat from Dunkirk, which is described in great and ghastly detail.... while Briony and her elder sister both take up nursing. The tale unfolds, dealing largely with the relationships between these three. Briony has wronged both of them, and they can not forgive her. But worse than that, Briony is even now exploiting the circumstances of what happened on that fateful day to create powerful works of "fiction" which she writes in her spare time, with her feet aching from long duties on the wards, and her hands cracked and numb from scrubbing with cold water and carbolic.

And finally we meet Briony in her dotage. She is now a distinguished and recognised writer, who has just been diagnosed with a degenerative brain condition... she is aware that she is losing her mind. And still, as the 21st Century dawns, she can not escape the remorse she feels for the dreadful mistake she made in the hot summer of 1935. Some but not many of the characters we met in the first section, are still alive... and the architecture of the work comes together. In spite of old lady Briony's impending illness, the book ends on a happy note. She has atoned.

Did I enjoy it? Sure, I did. But not enough to email all my friends to exhort them to buy it.