So rarely has there been a book written with such an elegant prose yet at the same time tells a great story that’s sweeping enough to gratify your senses. It’s a panache most novelist of contemporary existence struggle to capture in words. Classics now are hard to come by – but when they do, they shine like a burning ember in a place void of any literary light. ATONEMENT is that ember. It glows in its sheer lyrical power, it burns in its intense emotions, and sparks like a wildfire of storytelling. Writing has found its utmost near-finest form in this one great epitome of a modern classic novel most novelist write to die for, or die to write for.


ATONEMENT was that book that most people had propped up copies in front of their faces in the tube or any train journey circa 2005. I’ve never seen one because I wasn’t in London still by that time, but even two years later, as I have noticed, it was incredible to see people still reading it. I was one of the desperate many who tried to get past scuttling throughout the pages.


However, I didn’t scuttle through it. I moved slowly, benevolently through every single page, almost literally swallowing every word of it. It’s not a novel to read swiftly; it’s a novel that needs grace and patience. Ian McEwan, now considered as one of the finest living-and-breathing British novelist, has put into paper something that most novels desire to achieve: a status of elegance. His prose, when read, ring in the air like a gentle tingle of a glass, a soft whisper of a wind passing and most often like a lyrical anthem bathed in beautifully used words.


It only lies useful when the writer tells a story about love, of tragedy, redemption, and loss. It’s a perfect setting: two Tallis sisters frolicking around their manorial house, one by the name of Briony setting up a stageplay for her debut as a self-pronounced playwright, and the other older one, Cecilia, a tormented soul wanting to break free from the confines of countryside yet at the same time confused with her own choice. This all comes to a point with one man. His name is Robbie. And when one child witness something she had never seen before, judgment becomes as dangerous as knives. One contortion of truth comes between two lovers that would result to their lives spent in separation during the World War I, as the girl grows up and suffering with the guilt and conscience. She spends a lifetime instead of finding peace and making atonement.


Of course, a novel as great as this, rarely as well that it doesn’t get spotted under Hollywood’s keen eyes. Now an acclaimed film, considered one of 2007’s best (and also personally considered as actually 2007’s finest with Joe Wright’s impeccable direction), this is one of those stories that’s best to be left unscathed by screenplay scalpels, with such a flow of description and narrative that’s almost too difficult to capture in motion picture, unless of course if an all-too brilliant filmmaker who’s visionary enough dares to take the challenge. The film succeeds, as we know, and it genuinely transfers the book’s imagery to the screen, almost as beautiful, almost as fragile.


I’ve never read such an adult novel for such a long time now, ever since Bernhard Schlink’s engrossing THE READER. Or probably I haven’t been reading too much. ATONEMENT possesses maturity that it holds its chin high, not in boastfulness, but with dignity. And only the ones who have read it will experience its narrative power. For those who haven’t, it’s not too late to get hold of a copy now, read it with pleasure, and read it with carefulness – advise you to read it with nothing to do at all, just a time for liberty in a silent corner of your house or in the garden. The power works here at its best.


VERDICT:


Unarguably one of the finest British novels of contemporary age. A classic read as it is unfathomably beautiful. Ian McEwan has crafted his masterpiece indeed.


RATING: A+