“Hello! please read my new book review on Ian mcEwan's book Atonement.here http://literary-book-reviews.blogspot.com/2009/09/atonement-by-ian-mcewan.htmlI hope you like it and continue to read more of my blogs!Many thanks and bountiful blessings to all!vickyhttp://literary-book-reviews.blogspot.com/”
“(HOT INCEST) "He had known her since they were children, and he had never looked at her."(50 pages later...at last...)"His excitement was close to pain and sharpened by the pressure of contradictions: she was familiar like a sister, she was exotic like a lover; he had always known her, he knew nothing about her; she was plain, she was beautiful; she was capable - how easily she protected herself against her brother - and twenty mintues ago she had wept; his stupid letter repelled her but it unlocked her. He regretted it, and he exulted in his mistake. They would be alone together soon, with more contradictions - hilarity and sensuousness, desire and fear at their recklessness, awe and impatience to begin. In an unused room somewhere on the second floor, or far from the house, beneath the trees by the river. Which? "”
“t - i - m - e p- a- s- s- a- g- e- s"The hard soles of his shoes rapped loudly on the metalled road like a giant clock, and he made himself think about time, about his great hoard, the luxury of an unspent fortune. He had never before felt so self-consciously young, nor experienced such appetite, such impatience for the story to begin. There were men at Cambridge who were mentally agile as teachers, and still played a decent game of tennis, still rowed, who were twenty years older than him. Twenty years at least in which to unfold his story at roughly this level of physical well-being - almost as long as he had already lived. Twenty years would sweep him forward to the futuristic date of 1955. What of importance would he know then that was obscure now? Might there be for him another thirty years beyond that time, to be lived out at some more thoughtful pace?""He thought of himself in 1962, at fifty, when he would be old but not quite old enought to be useless, and of the weathered, knowing doctor he would be by then, with the secret stories, the tragedies and successes stacked behind him. Also stacked would be books by the thousand, for there would be a study, vast and gloomy, richly crammed with the rophies of a lifetime's travel and thought---"”
“"That they were old friends who had shared a childhood was now a barrier - they were embarrassed before their former selves. Their friendship had become vague and even constrained in recent years, but it was still an old habit, and to break it now in order to become strangers on intimate terms required a clarity of purpose which had temporarily deserted them""Until that moment, there was still something ludicrous about having a familiar face so close to one's own. They felt watched by their bemused childhood selves. ""At last they were strangers, their pasts were forgotten. They were also strangers to themselves who had forgotten who or where they were. The library door was thick and none of the ordinary sounds that might have reminded them, might have held them back, could reach them. They were beyond the present, outside time, with no memories and no future. There was nothing but obliterating sensation, thrilling and swelling, and the sound of fabric on fabric and skin on fabric as their limbs slid across each other in this restless, sensuous wrestling. His experience was limited and he knew only at second hand that they need not lie down."(?????????????)"As for her, beyond all the films she had seen, and all the novels and lyrical poems she had read, she had no experience at all. Despite these limitations it did not surprise them how clearly they knew their own needs.""They were stilled not by the astonishing fact of arrival, but by an awed sense of return - they were face to face in the gloom, staring into what little they could see of each other's eyes, and now it was the impersonal that dropped away. Of course, there was nothing abstract about a face.""The son of Grace and Earnest Turner, the daughter of Emily and Jack Tallis, the childhood friends, the university acquaintances, in a state of expansive, tranquil joy, confronted the momentous change they had achieved. The closeness of a familiar face was not ludicrous, it was wondrous.""Robbie stared at the woman, the girl he had always known, thinking the change was entirely in himself, and was as fundamental, as fundamentally biological, as birth. Nothing as singular or as important had happened since the day of his birth. She returned his gaze,struck by the sense of her own transformation, and overwhelmed by the beauty in a face which a lifetime's habit had taught her to ignore."”
“I am enjoying this a lot more than I thought I would. I haven't seen the movie yet, so it has remained unspoiled. I've had it on my bottom shelf for about a year and decided to pick it up. Bad choice with finals so near--I can hardly put it down now! -kate.”
“I've been trying to read this for the last couple of weeks, but I can only get a few pages in without becoming uninterested. For those who have read it, does it get better? I feel like it's just page after page of unnecessary descriptions. I want to enjoy this book, but I don't.”
“Atonement - who is trying to atone and for what? Maybe that long rejection letter that Briony receives is more important than it seems at first ...”
“I love this book so much, I'm afraid to watch the movie. Do I dare?”
“I thought it was amazingly well written! Such a great story, I didn't find it boring or difficult to read but tastes do differ...I liked the 4 parts structure and the (rather cruel but realistic) twist in the end and how we're somehow reading the book written by the main character...Beautiful, touching, sad...[3”
“one really has to get the author's style, make it through the first two chapters before you can feel and underatand the story. the author seems to challenge you to analyze who and what the characters are, how each character, details of the plot and scenes are interconnected. the book wants you to think first before you enjoy. plus, if you read the book first, because youhave the knowledge of the depth and relevance of each character and scene, only then you'll enjoy the movie and consider the time viewing it well spent.”
