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Title: Heavy handed and thin
Review: After ploughing through Atonement for a book group, I was very disappointed. The writing is heavy handed, the character development is virtually nonexistent, many of the key characters disappear after the "crime", and the plot development is thin. It would have made an interesting short story, but McEwan fills up page after page with irrelevant war experiences of two of the characters that have nothing to do with the plot of the book and stretches an interesting premise into an empty novel. Atonement for the main character, Briony, is irrelevant since the only two characters who can give her forgiveness, we find out in the last pages, are dead. Just as the story dwells endlessly inside of the head of immature, fantasy prone, histrionic Briony--her perceived atonement is just as fantastical. This book is much ado about nothing. I'm surprised McEwan got such good press. Perhaps it's because he is a Booker prize winner for a prior work.
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