Atonement, Ian McEvan

The movie makes this book into something else, but this is the story of a little girl making sense of what she sees, a little girl who sees something beyond her understanding which takes her years to comprehend, accept, and then, finally, atone for. This story is laden with rich detail in setting and thought, beautifully told with unflinching compassion, a story of forgiveness; not easy lovey, "it's all good" forgiveness, but the gritty hard-wrought kind that you fight your demons for, that takes a piece of you with it. This was my first Ian McEwan and it hit me like a cricket bat, so maybe that's why I find the rest of his novels pale by comparison, it's often that way, but I do feel that. I gobbled up three of his novels in a row, looking for that vivid, almost sparkling froughtness of this book. All of them are compelling, but none of them is quite as complete as this one.
I bought this copy on College St. at She Said Boom, which has a pretty good selection of fiction and humanities as well as movies and music, and a table at the front where you can always find something really good. I read this here in the city at our old place, on the green sofa, with a pillow on my stomach.
I savoured this book, I really did, but now that it's come time to decide to keep it or not, I find I'm kind of mad at it. It's just that there's this guy, and he's so... wrong. I know that's part of the point, but I really I want him out of the house now that I think of it.
Score - -1 (2 saved, 3 released)