I forgive you for not having read Ian McEwan's Atonement

Speaking as a writer, editorialization can be one of the most difficult aspects of penmanship. Just when can an author hint at or even frankly state the themes of his or her novel? Can nothing be said? Can everything be said, only in the closing paragraphs? In Atonement, Ian McEwan works around these questions almost effortlessly, revealing numerous themes and ideas without taking our eyes off of the work's main story.

In 1935, 13-year-old Briony is an ambitious and highly imaginative young British writer, spending most of her time at home making up stories and writing plays. But her creative process entraps everyone when she witnesses the 20-ish Turner and her 20-ish older sister Cecilia making love one night in a dark corner. Having read a lascivious note that Turner passed onto Cecilia early in the day, Briony makes Turner out to be a "monster" and eventually is able to convince her superiors that he raped one of her cousins.

The issue of forgiveness becomes prominent very soon -- after five years in jail, Turner is sent off to fight the Nazis in World War II, and despite Briony's youth, he can not bring himself to forgive her. The same goes for Cecilia, who ends up abandoning her entire family after Turner's trial. While training as a nurse, Cecilia attempts to forgive herself and, while treating many of the war's wounded, comes to grips with the fate that her choices have led Turner to.

But what McEwan most successfully taps into is the nature of fiction and the various effects that it can have on society. Briony's imagination damages the lives of many, but can she use it later in life to atone for her sins -- to reveal the truth of what really happened that night, so many years ago? While exploring this, the author also includes some life-changingly insightful statements about writing:

It wasn't only wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding; above all, it was the failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you. And only in a story could you enter these different minds and show how they had an equal value. That was the only moral a story need have.

If there was an answer to the question, "Why do you write?", the above paragraph is it.

But the prose is solid throughout -- McEwan is an experienced and wise enough artist to portray both sex, violence, drama and comedy both effectively and provocatively. After the final chapter, Atonement is a novel that stays with the reader, despite its profoundly sad and ambivalent conclusion.

Rating: A