I read Atonement, by Ian McEwan

In World War II England, 13-year-old Briony Tallis misinterprets her older sister’s love affair with their family’s gardener to be something much worse than what it is. Her innocence and partial understanding of the world begins a chain of events that tears the family apart and alters the course of the rest of the girl’s life.

Sounds a little dry, right? Wrong! I guess I forgot to mention that the book was written by Ian McEwan, the king of uncomfortable moments, weird sex stuff, the rotating third-person close perspective, and – I’ll say it! – writing about the human psyche. While I’ve found some of his earlier books to be a little too uncomfortable (or, rather, too uncomfortable without good reason) or a little too sexually deviant (again, in the way that it seemed for shock value rather than for a reason), this was a freaking masterpiece.  My definition of a masterpiece: I was jealous while reading it and cried while reading the last page.

I think the one thing that makes this book so wonderful is McEwan’s eerily accurate understanding of how a 13-year-old girl’s mind works – her understanding of the world and her emotional reaction to it. Briony is trapped between childhood and adulthood. She’s old enough to recognize the dark and startling behind-the-scenes facets of her proper British family’s life, but not old enough to properly analyze or judge them. She’s old enough to impose her will and her ideas on others, but not wise enough to know when to act or when to question herself. It’s a frustrating and fascinating (and uncomfortable) time, and he has it down pat.

McEwan also experiments with structure in ways that are truly innovative and new without being gimmicky. Briony is an aspiring writer who grows and develops her style throughout the 60 years that the novel covers, and McEwan’s novel mirrors her literary growth. Part One of the story is extremely traditional (broken into chapters, with a clear rotation of perspectives and a uniform chronology). Parts Two and Three are much more modern – the story, which switches gears to follow the gardener into WWII France and Briony to her experiences as a nurse in London, loses structure and fluidity and uses more modern storytelling techniques. Finally, the last section is utterly contemporary – the story becomes even more abstract, with unreliable narrators and more conceptual writing favored over simple narrative.

And yet these games with structure and story and perspective in no way take your focus from the story and the characters. Instead, they add to the experience of watching the main character grow and develop.

If the book suffers from anything, it might be a little slow in some places and move too fast in others. Since McEwan tends to be very thorough when it comes to interior thought, the story often slows down a bit more than it should so that he can explain how every single person felt about a certain moment in time (although the story spans 60 years, the first 200 pages span a single afternoon and evening). The slow story is a necessary evil, though, if we want to keep the detailed character studies in place. And we do. And the action-filled second half of the book, which covers the British retreat from the Germans in 1940 and the over-capacity army hospitals of London, makes up for the sometimes austere and rigorous first half. It just takes a while to get the story rolling.

Overall, if I were you, I’d get this book and read it over Thanksgiving break.

Read my review of Ian McEwen’s On Chesil Beach.

Talking about reading

I have trouble finding the right way to have conversations about books. Book clubs usually bother me. And while getting my MFA, the three required 500-level literature seminars I took probably rank among the least favorite and most useless hours of my entire life. Literature classes are too much about showing off, about making other people in the class feel bad, about assuming that the author and his work fit perfectly into certain genres, time periods, and trends. Literature classes too often assume that any book read in a literature class is perfect and that the author knew exactly what he or she was doing with every single word. Not to mention that literature classes are usually way too serious and seriously boring.

On the other hand, book clubs suffer from different but equally bad problems. Too often the discussion disintegrates into emotional reactions – like which characters we liked or didn’t like, as if these characters really existed. Too often after that, the conversation too quickly deteriorates into talking about boys or shoes. Usually, these book clubs take place in quaintly quirky coffee houses with mismatched chairs, $5 espressos, and music that is just a little cooler than the music you listen to. Without exception, these coffeehouses have punny names like “The Daily Grind” or “Not Your Average Joe” or “See You Latte.”

So, you can imagine my horror yesterday, walking to a tea house called “Subtle Tea” to meet with my work-related book club for the first time. As I walked into the place, esoteric trip-hop music on the stereo (which was a just little cooler than my music ) and Mac laptops covering every flat surface (way, way cooler than my Mac laptop), my hopes were not high. Even though I wanted to talk about the book, I wasn’t sure I was ready to be disappointed again. You might even say I was filled with a deep Apa Tea.

But what followed, to my delight, was a pretty intelligent and fun discussion of the book we read (it was Marisha Pessl’s “Special Topics in Calamity Physics – you can read my review here). No one got interrupted, no one talked too much, no one said “semiotic” or “paradigm” or “post post modern.” Someone brought chocolate.  

It reminded me that, even though most organized book-talking sessions go wrong somehow, getting to talk about what you’re reading with a diverse group of people is something to work toward, even if it means sitting within earshot of a hipster knitting circle discussing skinny jeans. Not only do you get to ask questions and hear about totally different and interesting readings of the book, but I also find myself reading the book more closely before the discussion and getting more out of it. The whole thing filled me with hope and got me totally excited about next month’s book, Ian McEwan’s Atonement.

After the meeting, I met my friend Amanda and we got talking about books, too – a new short story writer she’s discovered, her first experience with Dos Passos. And when I got home, I talked with Ben about the short story I read on the train that he had recommended. Here I was thinking that I never get to talk about books, when really I spent the whole night doing it with one person or another, in one way or another.

My friends, I suppose, make up a more loose-knit un-official book club – we often borrow and lend books to each other, argue over this or that author, talk about this or that review or trend. And I think that’s just as rewarding and just as important. I supposed the only difference is that our book club meets in bars. Bars with more straightforward names like “Cheap Shots” and “Why Not?”

Either way, I’m glad I now have both venues.