By this point in Atonement we are about as far away from the Jane Austen-esque opening as imaginable. Yet McEwan surprisingly, determinedly, works his way back, creating a novel that eventually returns full circle to its opening pages. Yet, as fiction often teaches us, the innocent past can never really be recaptured. And McEwan’s provocative new twist on this truism gives Atonement an emotionally shattering conclusion. In a book that has already achieved such high points, only the grandest of endings could cap it off appropriately. McEwan pulls out all the stops here, and rolls the dice, saving his riskiest move for last. But as they say, bet and win. And in Atonement, Ian McEwan does just that.
"A sinister cabal of superior writers."
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