Ian McEwan's "Atonement"

[Phredicles]

Anyone else read it?


Anyone else hate it?

[LisaM]

1. No, but I hated "Amsterdam"

Does that count?

[MasonJar]

2. I've read it and I didn't hate it. It was a dark book, but extremely

well written and thought-provoking. It has been quite a while since I read it, so I am vague on the details of what I thought at the time. The ending was disappointing. I just read his novel, Saturday, and felt the opposite. It was slow at the beginning, but got tremendously enthralling at the end. What did you not like about Atonement?

[Phredicles]

5. The main thing is, the protagonist is a horrible narcissistic brat,

not someone I enjoyed spending hundreds of rather turgid pages with.

Then, after you wade through an apocalyptic, nightmare-inducing description of Dunkirk, you get what looks like the beginning of a happy ending, where it looks like at least some of the damage done by the aforementioned HNB is starting to be overcome. But right at the end, that's taken away; we find the people most hurt by HNB actually died painfully and apart. Fuck that shit.

I'm not saying the novel was badly done or ill-conceived by any means. I just hated it.

[benddem]

3. I couldn't get

past the first 2 chapters...and still can't figure out why it was considered so great!

[MasonJar]

4. It is almost like judging a book by its cover to judge it after only 2 chapters.

Do not get me wrong. I am not necessarily defending the book, but ........

[Lydia Leftcoast]

7. I got about 3/4 of the way through and decided I didn't want to finish it

I just didn't care about the characters at all.

[Phentex]

8. That was me. I made myself finish it though and

the book club discussion that followed was far better than the book! I think it was one of those novels I just didn't get.

[japple]

10. Ditto. Just didn't care enough about the characters to

finish reading the book.

[legally blonde]

6. definitely a very dark book

I can't say it was the most enjoyable book I've ever read, but it was thought provoking.

I'm starting Saturday after I finish my current book.

[superconnected]

9. I read it. The story is HORRIBLY laid out.

Severely unbalanced. The first part has a whole different type of style than the 2nd and third parts. The Third part was very unsatisfying. I liked the first and thought that was well written. After that, the book format fell to pieces when the writer abandoned his first style of showing different peoples points of view. The 2nd part was a good read but it was a poor fit for the first part in the style it was written. The third part did an severly bad turn when it jumped ahead - abandoning the first and seconds parts style to become completely unsatifying.

The writer lacks even the basic skills most writers have for continuing a story. That's a pretty sad place to be in at his age -70's. All this had was a very good premise for a beginning of a story which the writer did not have the skill(or possibly dicipline) to realize.

I'm glad I read the book because I liked the premise for the story. I'm sorry it wasn't devoloped to completion. (if you would call the 2nd part completion then the book really needed to end there). I felt very gyped at the end. Not only didn't I like the ending. I felt the writer had done such a poor job of constructing the story(balance and stylewise) that I would be embarassed to recommend the book to anyone.

Lastly, as an author he failed on many levels. The biggest is he didn't give his audience what they wanted, he gave them a pick your own ending which doesn't work here. I don't want to read another book from him because of this book. I can't think of any other author I can say that about.

I refuse to see the movie coming out for this in December because they used the books ending - right down to briony being and old lady and watching her play. I'll skip it. All I can think is McEwan needs to lay down the pen for good and take his alzheimer meds now.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

11. So why did this book gain such critical acclaim?

:shrug:

You have articulated some of the same criticisms that I had it.

[DemBones DemBones]

12. I don't understand the acclaim, either. I enjoyed reading

Amsterdam and his other earlier novel (though I've forgotten the title) but Atonement was just not interesting.

[Captain Hilts]

13. He's a great writer but this is a lousy story. nt