Finished: Atonement (McEwan) Sadness, wretched, unfair, sadness abounds! Can I really put a thirteen year old girl on my Least Favorite Literary Characters list? Yes, yes I can. I remember seeing this movie a few years ago, and being very disturbed by it...but not so utterly moved. This is definitely a case of the book being better. The book delves so deeply into the extremely fantastical and narcissistic mind of thirteen year old Briony Tallis, that we know her every thought as she selfishly, and usually heartlessly, makes every event that she witnesses between two people an inflated story in her mind, with herself usually as some kind of victim or hero. The Tallis family is one of great wealth in 1935 England, and they live on a huge estate. The father is never home, and the mother is often in bed suffering from migraines. Briony's older sister, Cecilia, is ten years older than she is, and her brother, Leon, two years older than Cecilia. Robbie, who is Cecilia's age, is the son of the house maid. After being abandoned by his father at a young age, he has grown up on the estate with his mom and been generously educated by the Tallis father. He's been close to Cecilia and Leon since early childhood, but as our story opens, it's quite clear that the now twenty-three year olds, Cecilia and Robbie, though putting on a good front of bickering, are actually quite in love with each other. They just haven't quite realized it themselves yet. On the eve before Robbie is to leave the estate and go on to medical school (again to be generously paid for by Cecilia's father), Briony mistakenly identifies Robbie as the person she saw raping her visiting cousin, Lola and all their lives change for the much, much worse. :-( Briony never actually SEES Robbie attacking Lola, but just sees a male form get up from her in the dark and walk off. She just WANTS it so badly to be Robbie because she has created this story in her mind that Robbie is a sexual maniac and she must save her own sister from him! This wild tale in her head comes from two sources...a note and a library scene. Robbie types a note to Cecilia declaring his feelings for her, planning to give it to her that night at the family dinner. He gets nervous and frustrated re-reading the note, though, and types at the end something about wanting her cunt, 24 hours a day...or something like that. Of course, he rips that out of the machine never planning for it to see the light of day. Instead, he hand writes his true feelings in the real note and plans to give that to her. In a rush to get to dinner, though, he accidentally put the wrong note in the envelope!!!!!!!!!!! And then, he sees Briony on the way to dinner and thinks it would be great if Cecilia saw his declaration before he gets there, so he asks Briony to take her the note! Aggghhh! Of course, the little brat reads the note! And, even though she doesn't know what the word means, she know that it's a vulgar sexual reference and she becomes determined right there that Robbie is a maniac and she must protect Cecilia from him, who will heap thanks and praise on her later. Robbie realizes too late that he put the wrong note in the envelope and almost doesn't go to the house....but it's a good thing he does, because Cecilia pulls him into the library and they declare their love for each other and start kissing, and going further, standing up against the library books, until they are actually making love! And who should hear unusual noises from the library?? Of course, Briony. So, Briony walks in on them and immediately thinks that Robbie is accosting her sister. She doesn't scream for help or anything, though. She just stands there and watches. When Cecilia runs out, she has no idea what Briony's thoughts are. Later in the evening when cousin Lola's twin brothers decide to run away from their visit, and everyone goes out to look for them on the pitch black, vast grounds. That is when Briony comes across Lola being raped and even though she doesn't see his face, she just KNOWS that it's Robbie. :-( When she rushes to comfort Lola, rather than letting Lola say who it was, Briony declares that she saw him and she knows it was Robbie. Of course, Lola knows better...she knows it was actually Leon's friend who came home with him from London. :-( We all know it...but not Briony. She wants so badly for Robbie to be guilty that she identifies him to the police and doesn't change her story. Lola never corrects her because she fancies herself in love with Leon's rapist friend. :::shudder::: Robbie, who was about to go to medical school, is instead tried, convicted and imprisoned. :-( At least Cecilia doesn't believe a word of Briony's story, though everyone else in the family turns on Robbie...even the Tallis father who has supported him and believed in him all those years. Fast forward five years and Robbie has been released from prison as long as he goes straight into the military to fight in the now raging war against Germany. Cecilia has completely cut her awful family off from her life and become a nurse in London. She has never stopped believing in Robbie and written back and forth to him the whole time he was in prison. They have declared their love for each other, and their intention to be together after the war...but they only get one brief afternoon together before he's shipped off to training camp and then the war. They manage to share just one kiss, but he carries that kiss with him, and all her letters through the war. The next section of the book is all about Robbie marching in retreat from the Germans with two war companions, making his way back to the coast of France where so many of the English servicemen are now waiting for ships to come and take them home. The scenes and bombings and hysteria he goes through are horrific! And, he does the entire march to the shore with a piece of shrapnel manifesting itself in his side. At the same time, we see that Briony is now eighteen and a nurse in London. She is baptized very quickly in the art of wartime nursing as the first casualties role in. She has written to her sister and hopes to meet with her. She wants to apologize and tell her she was wrong...after all these years. She never explains how she figured out she was wrong, or if she just knew all along. Briony also receives a letter from her father informing her that Lola and Marshall (Leon's rapist friend) are getting married in London that next week. Briony takes the day off from the hospital and attends the wedding, intending to stand up and say Marshall was the real rapist when the priest asks if there is anyone with an objection, but she's too cowardly to do it. She walks to Cecilia's apartment after that and is happily shocked to see Robbie there as well. They are both furious with her. She apologizes for what she did years ago and swears to write a formal letter to both their family and to the authorities clearing Robbie's name. They don't have any loving sisterly moments, but Cecilia and Robbie walk her back to her train station and say goodbye. Briony signs off at the end of that chapter with her initials, and says that the aforementioned writing was the truth of the story....her atonement, for her actions that derailed the lives of Robbie and Cecilia. The story then moves to when Briony is seventy-seven years old and she's an acclaimed authoress. She is going into a museum in London when she espies the very wealthy Lola and Marshall, still married, but themselves quite old now. She avoids running into them, but as we hear her thoughts again, she explains to the reader that while she did write the truth of the rape matter in her story, she has yet to be able to publish it because of litigation factors. As long as the rich, powerful and litigation-happy Lola and Marshall are alive, she can never accuse Marshall of the horrific rape and clear Robbie's name. No publisher will touch it. What's more....she was a coward all those years ago at the wedding...and a coward right afterwards. She never went to her sister's apartment to face her. Robbie had never been there. He'd died of septicemia from his shrapnel wound while waiting for the ship on the shore in France. :-( And, Cecilia had been killed two months later in a bombing in London. :-( They had never seen each other again after their one afternoon kiss when Robbie left for training. :-( Briony made up the part about Robbie being back to see Cecilia, figuring readers would rather have somewhat of a happy ending, rather than the sad truth. Sigh...so, so very sad. All because a selfish, stupid, little girl, who was certainly old enough to know better in my opinion, wouldn't see beyond herself and tell the truth! This was a very well written book, and has obviously evoked emotion in me...but I don't think I can put it on a favorite list, because it's so tragic. :-(