Atonement (#1)

Well, here we go again... a new year of books!  This book officially ends my unplanned "currently playing in a theater near you" trilogy.   While Kite Runner seems to have fallen off the award season radar, Best Picture nominations are heavily favored for No Country For Old Men and...

the Golden Globe winner for Best Drama... the film version of Ian McEwan's Atonement.  The funny thing about this one is that I myself pretty much convinced that I had already read it!  Having read a couple of his books, I have asserted that McEwan is one of the finest writers out there today... so much so that I awarded Saturday the high honor of W&C Fiction Novel of 2006.  So when the movie comes out, I don't feel the need to turn away from commercials or reviews for fear of being "spoiled"... after all, I had read the book!  But none of the plot, character names, or dialogue seem to be ringing the proverbial bell. 

I take the book off the shelf... read the back cover... read the first page or so... still nothing.  I am pretty delicate with my books... I  don't bend books wildly or "break" the spine... but it didn't take long to figure out by the feel of the book that it had never been read.  One of my quirks is really liking that new book feel... thus why I prefer to buy books... and buy them new... even if I don't read them for years and years (like this one!).

WARNING:  While I do not get into details... some of the below may be viewed as spoilers.

McEwan is master at examining life-changing moments... and usually ones that are not for the better.  The first part of Atonement takes place during one day on a schmancy estate in pre-WWII England.  In an act of jealousy and/or youthful misunderstanding, a young girl falsely accuses the son of a servant, who is in love with her old sister, of a crime against her visiting young cousin.  Accounting for nearly the first one-third of the book, the day unfolds in fascinating (or, depending on your opinion, excruciating) detail... from multiple perspectives and slightly overlapping time periods all leading up to false accusation and its immediate aftermath.  As hinted above, I have since read others' opinions of the book... and quite a few did not like this first part at all.  I absolutely loved it.  Sure a few pages basically telling me the matriarch of the family has migraines is perhaps overkill... but, as usual, I was bowled over by McEwan's amazing prose.

Where things lost me was the next section that took place during WWII.  I'll admit I am not a big fan of the war novel (one reason I didn't fully get into Suite Francaise).   As you can imagine, the folks that didn't like the first part, loved the second part.... for me, it was very difficult to get through this portion and it pretty much undid all the goodwill the book had built up thus far.  It got back onto the rails a bit in Part III... followed by a brief epilogue, taking place in the present day, that flips pretty much everything.

While I am not a fan of the last-minute flip (see The Double Bind), McEwan is a skillful enough of a writer to pull it off.  Whether or not I was thrilled by it and/or not made to feel like somewhat of a sucker... well, that's another story.  Post-reading research suggests that Atonement is McEwan's "masterpiece"... and likewise there appears to be a good probability that the big screen translation may be the Best Picture of the Year... but while quite good and no regrets, it is not my favorite McEwan novel.

The "info bar" you see below is re: my 2008 reading challenge to read 12,345 pages... if want to know what it all means, I am sparing the casual W&C reader and putting it "after the jump."

2008 1-2-3-4-5 Reading Challenge: + 246 Pages (Total: 246 pages -- Pace: +43 pages -- Change: 0)

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"After The Jump" - More About My 2008 Reading Challenge

My new reading goal is underway and thanks to quite a bit of free time at the start of the year I got off to a quick start.   I am a stickler when counting pages... so while Atonement was 349 pages long, only the last 246 pages that were read during "this year."

RE: the pace... in order to achieve 12,345 pages in one year, I have to keep a pace of approximately 34 (okay, 33.8) pages a day!!   I have a way too nerdy spreadsheet that figures out the page I should be on given how many days have passed in this reading challenge year.  So the +43 you see above means that at the end of this book, I was 43 pages ahead of where I should have been on the date I finished the book.

The "change" will be the change in the pace from one book to the next.

If I want to achieve my 12,345 page goal, I will have to build up a sizable page pace surplus!  Day-wise I read 88% last year... but that translates to 42 days I did not pick up a book... calc that out by 33.8 pags and it's a whopping 1400+ pages to make up if I "take off" the same number of days this year.  So while I am doing quite well at the moment, I think this year will truly be a challenge!