Yes, I know, it's been a while. I picked up this book at the start of the last semester in my senior year of high school, and things were hectic. But the truth is that I've just been lazy. Don't worry, I'll get what I deserve when I pay my library fine today...
Ian McEwan is an awesome writer. It's written very well and has all the basic elements of good prose: figurative language, sentence variety, big words, etc. And it was also comprehensible. Literature can sometimes be inaccessible and difficult, but McEwan shows that diction doesn't have to be obscure to be profound.
At first, I was a tad offended by a part earlier in the book, a part in which a college boy gives a letter to his future lover using a certain word that I won't repeat. I was so let down; the rest of the book was written so well! Vulgarity is the opposite of creativity, and both can be seen in the book. This conflict of ideas made me squirm. I felt like the author offended me in some way. Couldn't he have used another word? That one word is so contrasting with the rest of the language in the book, and I didn't like it. Then, scattered throughout the rest of the book, more obscenities were said by other characters. It didn't seem necessary to me to pepper that in. But, if I'm planning to eventually become an editor, then I have to find a way to cope with it. And I did.
At one point, the main character, Briony, sends in a novella to a publisher, but is rejected due to its lack of authorial spice. What the editor didn't know was that the novella was an actual experience that she had when she was a little girl. The experience was important to her in that it marked the beginning of growing up. It was the curiosity of watching her sister and their gardener by a fountain that was the initiatory push towards her loss of innocence. I could imagine how she felt when she got the rejection letter, when an editor said that her truth was not publishable. I related this to my own feelings towards the book. Atonement is not a true story, but it wasn't sugarcoated. This was how it would have happened. The military during World War II wouldn't watch their language when roaming around France, nor would a soldier not curse when eight piece of shrapnel were being pulled out of his leg. The author wrote it how he wanted, and who am I to say it isn't good enough?
And so, after a change of heart, I did enjoy it. It reminded me how painful it can be to obtain forgiveness for wrongdoings. Every action has a consequence, and we are all responsible for that, whether for better or for worse. Seeking restitution from the people you've hurt is required for one's own peace of mind, which is necessary step for forgiveness. You have to forgive yourself before you can leave it all behind you. This is something that I should take to heart in my own life. I haven't necessarily hurt other people with my actions, but I definitely have hurt myself. Every time I make that recurring mistake, I hate myself for it. What I learned from this book is that you can't do that. You have to have regret and remorse for what you did, but you have to be able to forgive yourself later on.
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