Atonement by Ian McEwan - book review

So. I finally finished Atonement last week. I’ve been wanting to read it for ages, it is an award winning book (National Book Critics Circle fiction winner in 2002) and spawned a hit movie. I am someone who must read the book before I see the movie and I am not someone who likes to analyze a book (hence the book club I helped found where we read books that are coming out as movies and instead of sitting around and talking about the book, we just go see the movie and then get drinks afterwards), I just want to read and get absorbed. I have heard such good things about this book for so long that I was psyched to finally start it. I was still psyched when I was 50 pages in, thinking that it must pick up soon. Slightly less psyched on page 100 when it was still “setting the scene”. It finally picked up around page 200. I am not someone who can stop reading a book once I’ve started, I gut through it even if it’s awful. Atonement wasn’t awful, the prose was beautiful but nothing really happened for a really long time! I kept at it and ended up getting into it on a recent flight to Boston (for the marathon trip) and finished it on the way back home, but wow. I know most people won’t stick with a book like I will and I’m thinking maybe my expectations just got majorly inflated due to the amazing reviews that both the book and movie received. All in all, looking back, it was a great book. It was very well written and the storytelling is very smooth. But Part I was so long and the pace was so slow. Since the movie was apparently so amazing and got nominated for so many Academy Awards, I almost think this is one case where it’s alright to skip the book and see the movie.

Now The Time Traveler’s Wife, on the other hand…read this book! It’s coming out as a movie later in 2008 and I am cautiously optimistic, but the book is just so wonderful, one of my favorites of all time and it would be a shame to skip this book and see the movie, which could end up a total butcher job, and miss out on the story as it was initially created.