I just began Ian McEwan's Atonement. At long last.
I am eight chapters in, and ... I've never read any McEwan before. The man is masterful. Masterful. Although I can't say why yet. All I know is ... he creates a world. An outer world, yes, England in the mid 1930s, a family house ... but he also creates all these inner worlds, of all the different characters. HOW exactly he does this remains mysterious. The writing is gripping. Gripping.
Over and under everything is this deep sense of unease, or dis-ease, perhaps is the better word. Something terrible is going to happen. I have no idea what.
And if you have read the book, DON'T tell me.
Here is an example. I read the following excerpt and had to put the book down for a minute, just to absorb it. Not just to absorb the extraordinary writing, but also: I sat there in awe at ... HOW he actually attempted (and succeeded) to describe such a moment. Perfect. A perfect moment of writing. I have had such moments, as he describes, in my life (moments of becoming conscious of being conscious) ... and ... when they occur, they always seem WAY beyond words. McEwan proves me wrong.
Each chapter, so far, is from a different point of view. The writing style undergoes a subtle shift with each character-change. The following excerpt is from the eyes of Briony (a scarily vulnerable 13 year old girl, who is obsessed with becoming a writer, and ... well. Something is UP with that girl. There's something not right about her, but McEwan, so far, isn't revealing whatever it is that might be missing in Briony).
Read:
She should have changed her dress this morning. She thought how she should take more care of her appearance, like Lola. It was childish not to. But what an effort it was. The silence hissed in her ears and her vision was faintly distorted -- her hands in her lap appeared unusually large and at the same time remote, as though viewed across an immense distance. She raised one hand and flexed its fingers and wondered, as she had sometimes before, how this thing, this machine for gripping, this fleshy spider on the end of her arm, came to be hers, entirely at her command. Or did it have some little life of its own? She bent her finger and straightened it. The mystery was in the instant before it moved, the dividing moment between not moving and moving, when her intention took effect. It was like a wave breaking. If she could only find herself at the crest, she thought, she might find the secret of herself, that part of her that was really in charge. She brought her forefinger closer to her face and stared at it, urging it to move. It remained still because she was pretending, she was not entirely serious, and because willing it to move, or being about to move it, was not the same as actually moving it. And when she did crook it finally, the action seemed to start in the finger itself, not in some part of her mind. When did it know to move, when did she know to move it? There was no catching herself out. It was either-or. There was no stitching, no seam, and yet she knew that behind the smooth continuous fabric was the real self -- was it her soul? -- which took the decision to cease pretending, and gave the final command.Posted by sheila