"Atonement"

I must have read the first five pages of "Atonement" a couple dozen times over the last year or so. Everyone I know has read "Atonement." When it came out, Ian McEwan was unanimously announced the best writer working in English today by critics, college students, and housewives everywhere. That is a key mix, right there - old intellectuals who give you awards, young intellectuals who set the tastes of a generation, and people who just want to read a good story and will tell everyone when they find one.

Now the movie is out and sure to win Academy Awards. It stars Keira Knightley, so I have to see it. I have a profound crush on Keira Knightley, probably aided by her strong resemblance to Natalie Portman, except that whereas Natalie Portman seems entirely too smart for me, Keira Knightley seems just smart enough. She's classy enough to get Oscar nominations, wily enough to latch onto franchises, and occasionally desperate enough to do this.

Anyways, yadda yadda, I took yet another extended break from reading "Against the Day" and decided to finish "Atonement" last week. My best friend spoke disparagingly of the book, saying that she couldn't remember a single part of it. My idol also had nothing good to say about it. I'm impressionable when my sixteen-year-old cousin tells me what music to listen to, so when the two people whose opinions I respect the most tell me a book is an overrated mess, it's hard to move past that initial impression.

But once "Atonement" really gets going, it's just so damned easy to read. McEwan does many complex things without ever once losing the narrative thread - he lingers on telling moments without ever boring you. Part 2 of the book describes the British retreat at the Battle of Dunkirk, and if McEwan had released that section alone, it would be one of the world's great short stories, to rival "The Dead" and "The Snows of Kilamanjaro," right down to the despairing, ambiguous, pitch perfect ending. As it is, the book's pace slackens in part 3 - impossible not to, after Dunkirk - but McEwan never once loses your attention. "Atonement" has all the depth of great drama and all the zippy thrill of a great melodrama. The final segue into metafiction should feel more like a rip-off, but it doesn't. McEwan's novel is, first and foremost, a book about writing, the search for truth in inherent lies. Essential reading. Finish it in a day, ponder it forever.