Oh Briony!: Ian McEwan's "Atonement" and A Writer's Destructive Imagination

I confess, I saw the movie before I ever picked up an Ian McEwan novel. The film's Romeo and Juliet-like plot made me cry, and Saoirse Ronan's brilliant portrayal of a dangerously fanciful preteen made me want to reach out and shake some sense into her. Gorgeous movie - and definitely deserving a much longer book-to-film review later on in this here blog.

But there is the movie...and there is the book. And McEwan's prose - rich, lyrical, and above all written with such insight into the soul of a writer - past, present, and future. Cecilia and Robbie's ill-starred love through the wide eyes of the bewildered Briony Tallis takes on many forms - her reactions all at once a younger sister clinging to her childhood, and a young woman feeling the first pangs of rejection. Perhaps you've seen the movie already, with Hollywood's compacted conclusion to this drama. I assure you - the book offers more than the welling up of regret in Vanessa Redgrave's watery visage.

This was a book that almost got left behind during my rather irritated stopover at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. After over ten hours of flying from Asia to the U.S. mainland, I found myself in a veritable maze of monorails and a whole alphabet of terminals and connections. I had already finished my stash of humor books - all written by the infinitely sharp and sassy Jessica Zafra, my teen writing idol (also due a much-needed post in the very near future). Boredom, my worst enemy, started to settle in with the exhaustion. I dragged myself to the nearest book kiosk, thinking of a light romance, or even a paperback mystery. "Atonement" featured prominently on the shelves, of course - as movie blockbusters do give any writer that added "buy me now!" gloss. I wasn't sure, almost picking up one of my favorite alterno-fantasy writers - Jasper Fforde - instead, taking a quick scan at a random McEwan page while waiting in line.

"The self-contained world she had drawn with clear and perfect lines had been defaced with the scribble of other minds, other needs; and time itself, so easily sectioned on paper into acts and scenes, was even now dribbling uncontrollably away."

Hrm.

And...as I am one of those perverse people who read the back of the book BEFORE purchase..

"The problem these fifty-nine years has been this: how can a novelist achieve atonement when, with her absolute power of deciding outcomes, she is also God? There is no one, no entity or higher form that she can appeal to, or be reconciled with, or that can forgive her. There is nothing outside her. In her imagination she has set the limits and the terms."

Hooked.

The relationships and the descriptions of a bygone age were so delicately wrought, I didn't want to deface the words by folding over the pages in my usual haste to mark my place (yes, I am also one of those awful people). My MPLS-CLE boarding pass slid in and out of this book like lightning - not even the fatigue or the bumpy flight could keep me off McEwan's narrative. "Oh ATONEMENT," exclaimed a particularly chatty seatmate...who proceeded to read over my shoulder in the most annoying fashion. I had to lean away protectively when I reached the scene of Cecilia and Robbie in the library, which went well beyond the already steamy grapple between camera-friendly Keira and James. (Hands-down, one of the hottest book love scenes ever - and the complete opposite of kilt-and-buxom maiden romantic cliches). And it has been a long time since a character made me as mad as Briony has - with her overzealous judgement, her child's logic of black and white marring one couple's chance for happiness.

Her saving grace, however, was her growth as a writer - my own chosen profession, passion, and many times, plague. When she struggled with rejection and rewriting, my heart went out to her - yes, even her, that little snot who testified so wrongly against Robbie - these creative growth spurts put to paper made her come alive as a full, however-flawed human being. She tried to lose herself in thankless nursing, scrubbing out her sins with the blood of the wounded - but that spirit remained alive, even during those traumatic times. She "took pleasure" in the competence and numbness that nursing offered - but she knew, scribbling away in private on a never-ending manuscript - that to feel deeply about life, to want to record all the aspects of the human condition, was her true calling.

"Here, behind the name badge and the uniform, was her true self, secretly hoarded, quietly accumulating. She had never lost that childish pleasure in seeing pages covered in her own handwriting. It almost didn't matter what she wrote...At the time, the journal preserved her dignity: she might look and behave like and live the life of a trainee nurse, but she was really an important writer in disguise. And at the time when she was cut off from everything she knew - family, home, friends - writing was the threat of continuity. It was what she had always done."

Her writing kept her from becoming a cookie-cutter villain, despite the horrible results of her childhood accusations. Her writing cursed her, because she kept returning to that one story, that one true narrative of events she tried to control...and failed miserably to understand. We can no more forgive her than condemn her in the end. Writing was her way of atoning for her past. It was the only thing she knew how to do - and face it, the only thing she really loved, above all the living, breathing characters in her life. It is a paper cut truth that lives within each one cursed and blessed with the pen's imperative to control, to mold, to manipulate reality into malleable words and sentences. Ah, Briony - I know thee well.