Product Description

Product Description
Understanding Ian McEwan provides a full discussion of the fiction written by one of Britain's most highly regarded novelists and the winner of the 1998 Booker Prize. David Malcolm places Ian McEwan's work—admired by critics for its polished, understated treatment of themes of aberrance and obsession—in the context of British literature's particular dynamism in the last decades of the twentieth century. He also examines McEwan's relationship to feminism, concern with rationalism and science, use of moral perspective, and proclivity toward fragmentation.

Malcolm offers close readings of McEwan's early short stories, which he recognizes as traditional and conservative in technique despite their shocking subject matter, and all of McEwan's novels. Employing the third novel, The Child in Time, as the fulcrum for his discussion, Malcolm explores the themes of incest, espionage, moral self-flagellation, sexual fixation, political dysfunction, and personal antipathy evident in the other fiction. He illumines the continuities obscured by the conventional approach to McEwan's fiction and raises the question whether McEwan is a novelist of brilliant fragments or of overall coherence. ... Read more

Product Description
The literary event of the season: a new novel from Ian McEwan, as surprising as it is masterful.Michael Beard is a Nobel prize-winning physicist whose best work is behind him. Trading on his reputation, he speaks for enormous fees, lends his name to the letterheads of renowned scientific institutions, and half-heartedly heads a government-backed initiative tackling global warming. While he coasts along in his professional life, Michael's personal life is another matter entirely. His fifth marriage is crumbling under the weight of his infidelities. But this time the tables are turned: His wife is having an affair, and Michael realizes he is still in love with her.When Michael's personal and professional lives begin to intersect in unexpected ways, an opportunity presents itself in the guise of an invitation to travel to New Mexico. Here is a chance for him to extricate himself from his marital problems, reinvigorate his career, and very possibly save the world from environmental disaster. Can a man who has made a mess of his life clean up the messes of humanity?A complex novel that brilliantly traces the arc of one man's ambitions and self-deceptions, Solar is a startling, witty, and stylish new work from one of the world's great wr ... Read more

Product Description
This is a concise and accessible student guide to McEwan's popular novel. "The Continuum Contemporaries" series gives readers accessible and informative introductions to some of the most popular, most acclaimed and most influential novels of recent years. This guide to "Atonement" features a biography of the author, a full-length analysis of the novel, a summary of the novel's popular and critical reception, a discussion of the recent film adaptation and a great deal more. If you're studying this novel, reading it for your book club, or if you simply want to know more about it, you'll find this guide informative, intelligent, and helpful. ... Read more

Product Description
DO NOT PURCHASE ... Read more

Product Description
This book investigates the motif of spectralmourning in John Banville's The Sea, Tim Parks'Destiny, and Ian McEwan's The Child in Time andsheds new light on the conjunction of mourning,mystery and ghosts in English literature. While theFreudian position of mourning is taken as atheoretical point of departure, the main focus is onJacques Derrida's ethics of mourning and othercontemporary mourning theories which conceive ofmourning as an interminable and irresolvableprocess. These theories centre on ethicalresponsibility to the Other, a discourse in criticaltheory that is known as the ethics of alterity, andinsist that ethical mourning involves maintainingthe relationship between self and other rather thanbreaking the bonds between the living and the dead.The motif of the spectre looms large in thisdiscourse, highlighting the liminal aspect ofrelations between self and other and the ethicalprinciple of openness. The author argues thatspectral mourning is transformative andhumanizing and it is through ghostly experiencesthat the bereaved protagonists find meaning again inlife, not in spite of loss but because of loss. ... Read more

Product Description
The novel opens on a sweltering summer day in 1935 at the Tallis family’s mansion in the Surrey countryside.Thirteen-year-old Briony has written a play in honor of the visit of her adored older brother Leon; other guests include her three young cousins -- refugees from their parent’s marital breakup -- Leon’s friend Paul Marshall, the manufacturer of a chocolate bar called “Amo” that soldiers will be able to carry into war, and Robbie Turner, the son of the family charlady whose brilliantly successful college career has been funded by Mr. Tallis.Jack Tallis is absent from the gathering; he spends most of his time in London at the War Ministry and with his mistress.His wife Emily is a semi-invalid, nursing chronic migraine headaches.Their elder daughter Cecilia is also present; she has just graduated from Cambridge and is at home for the summer, restless and yearning for her life to really begin.Rehearsals for Briony’s play aren’t going well; her cousin Lola has stolen the starring role, the twin boys can’t speak the lines properly, and Briony suddenly realizes that her destiny is to be a novelist, not a dramatist.

In the midst of the long hot afternoon, Briony happens to be watching from a window when Cecilia strips off her clothes and plunges into the fountain on the lawn as Robbie looks on.Later that evening, Briony thinks she sees Robbie attacking Cecilia in the library, she reads a note meant for Cecilia, her cousin Lola is sexually assaulted, and she makes an accusation that she will repent for the rest of her life.

The next two parts of Atonement shift to the spring of 1940 as Hitler’s forces are sweeping across the Low Countries and into France.Robbie Turner, wounded, joins the disastrous British retreat to Dunkirk.Instead of going up to Cambridge to begin her studies, Briony has become a nurse in one of London’s military hospitals.The fourth and final section takes place in 1999, as Briony celebrates her 77th birthday with the completion of a book about the events of 1935 and 1940, a novel called Atonement.

In its broad historical framework Atonement is a departure from McEwan’s earlier work, and he loads the story with an emotional intensity and a gripping plot reminiscent of the best nineteenth-century fiction.Brilliant and utterly enthralling in its depiction of childhood, love and war, England and class, the novel is a profoundly moving exploration of shame and forgiveness and the difficulty of absolution. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Enchanting
Briony is determined that her cousins will be a part of her play, that they will like performing, and that she will decide who plays which part.The cousins, unfortunately, are arriving not for a holiday but to be away while their parents fight out a divorce and are in no mood to perform plays.It is 1935 and England is close to entering the war.

At thirteen, Briony is sure her writing skills are top notch, that she is surely unique in all the deep thoughts she has about life.And then one day when she leaves her play rehearsal for a walk in the garden she sees a strange encounter between her sister, Cecilia, and the cleaning lady's son, Robbie.It will shape all their lives forevermore.

That very evening when the twin cousins "run away," an event occurs in the dark around the house grounds that appears to be a sexual offense.Briony convinces herself that she has seen the incident.And it changes everyone's life forevermore.She becomes so entrenched in retelling the event with surety that even when she doubts what she saw she feels trapped and unable to retract her charge.

The reader follows Briony all through her life, even as she becomes a well regarded author, she can never fully enjoy her success because of what she did so long ago.

Ian McEwan writes with so many levels of story and so much depth of character that it was enchanting to read. ... Read more

Product Description
The literary event of the season: a new novel from Ian McEwan, as surprising as it is masterful.Michael Beard is a Nobel prize-winning physicist whose best work is behind him. Trading on his reputation, he speaks for enormous fees, lends his name to the letterheads of renowned scientific institutions, and half-heartedly heads a government-backed initiative tackling global warming. While he coasts along in his professional life, Michael's personal life is another matter entirely. His fifth marriage is crumbling under the weight of his infidelities. But this time the tables are turned: His wife is having an affair, and Michael realizes he is still in love with her.When Michael's personal and professional lives begin to intersect in unexpected ways, an opportunity presents itself in the guise of an invitation to travel to New Mexico. Here is a chance for him to extricate himself from his marital problems, reinvigorate his career, and very possibly save the world from environmental disaster. Can a man who has made a mess of his life clean up the messes of humanity?A complex novel that brilliantly traces the arc of one man's ambitions and self-deceptions, Solar is a startling, witty, and stylish new work from one of the world's great writers. ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from International Fiction Review, published by International Fiction Association on January 1, 2004. The length of the article is 1194 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Ian McEwan: Atonement.(Book Review)
Author: Nora Foster Stovel
Publication: International Fiction Review (Refereed)
Date: January 1, 2004
Publisher: International Fiction Association
Volume: 31Issue: 1-2Page: 114(3)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more