'Atonement' by Ian McEwan

September 2011

the book shop provide wrapping service

Atonement

This book was one of the books I bought in Japan from a book shop in the middle of nowhere. The English books section was having sales, all 50% down. Then, I found this book, it was adapted into movie already. Although I never watch the film, but I knew the rating was good. This book cost around 600 yen, so I quickly grabbed it. Imagined my surprise when the cashier asked me whether I want my book wrapped. Of course, I said yes. No wonder I saw all those people who read inside the train has their books wrapped by brown paper, it was a norm in Japan.

I didn't started to read until my summer holiday on August. I planned to read on train because the time taken to reach Matsue (松江) from Kumamoto (熊本) was around 6 hours, and I had to have something to kill time. It was a suitable book because it was quite thick with not too big font size, so I wouldn't finish it too quickly. In fact, I just finished 2/3 of the book during the ride because after a while, I became sleepy and not in the mood to read. Actually, I finished this book after I came back from my holiday.

The story line was very fine. The heroine was a author and inside the story, she wrote and it was something like an autobiography. It told of a little girl, Briony mistakenly identified her sister's lover to be the rapist who raped her cousin and tried hard to redeemed her mistake later in life. It also tell of the difficulty of lovers from different strata of society and the cruelty of war. While I felt sorry for the little girl, I cannot help to blame her, if it wasn't for her, her sister would never have to separate from her lover and family. I was surprised that at the end of the story, when Briony revealed that her sister and her lover died, one in London and one in France during the war because in part 3 of the novel, Briony paid a visit to her sister to tell her who was really the rapist, and she left seeing the lovers standing together. It was very heart wrenching that they only have the chance to reunite inside a story, but not in real life.

After reading this, it was like a stone hanging inside the heart, not feeling too well because I am the kind of person who like great, happy endings. However, this book will remain one of my favourite for some time to come.