Recommendations from our site
“Atonement is a novel within a novel: Briony is an inspiring writer who has submitted a novella to an editor and gets feedback that she has to ramp up the tension. i.e., to use literary devices to make it a more enticing story. McEwan is basically telling us that this is happening in the story we’re reading: it is a retelling of events from her childhood, but with her own imaginative contributions. History is a perception of the past, a constructed narrative. There is always something implicitly unreliable about this; even with recent history we are always getting things wrong, losing part of the truth of what actually happened. Some voices shout louder than others.” Read more...
Lori Inglis Hall, Novelist
