Honourable echoes of Evelyn Waugh and Virginia Woolf are to be heard throughout this magnificent, unusually graceful novel. But the sheer force of Ian McEwan's considerable intelligence and a sustained tone of nostalgic realism ensure Atonement, while reflecting traditional English fiction at its finest, also brings it a step further towards the not so Brave New World of our present. Few novels, none recent, match the delicate balancing of brutality and sensitivity McEwan achieves in a family story that becomes a tragic lament of regret and guilt.
The beauty of the exact prose and the initial mood of languor juxtaposed with the respective private frustrations of the main characters are hypnotic, yet at no time does McEwan permit either his novel or his readers to relax into a gentle wander through life as lived by the rich in a large country house.
A sense of almost-but-not-quite prevails. Briony Tallis is 13, not quite a child but certainly not an adult. As the baby of a family in which Whitehall-civil-servant father works and sins discreetly in London while mother tends her disappointments and migraines at home with the assistance of wealth and status, Briony lives in her imagination and writes stories using big words the meaning of which she is not quite sure of. The vast country house is impressive but ugly, the product of recent money earned by a late Victorian locksmith.
Mr Tallis has already sent both his elder children off to Cambridge without much distinction, the academic honours being won instead by Robbie, the fatherless son of Grace Turner, their cleaner. The boy's education has been sponsored by Mr Tallis, and now having taken a first, Robbie, currently acting as the gardener, wants to study medicine.
Most powerful of all is McEwan's central thesis, that of innocence betrayed and betraying. Imagination becomes a weapon not a benign gift. The narrative begins on the hottest day of the summer of 1935. Briony, a compulsive writer, is fretting over her latest creation, a play. McEwan's portrait of this young girl, his understanding of her small world and her preoccupations is beautifully handled. The heat of the day seems to dictate the action. Tempers are frayed. Briony is faced with a cast culled from her stupid trio of cousins. These children are less house guests than refugees fleeing the divorce of their parents. Briony, however, is so fully absorbed by her need to impress and delight that she sees nothing, only the threat the twins and their dangerously glamorous not quite 16-year-old sister, Lola, pose to her drama.
Unfolding parallel to Briony's thwarted ambitions and subsequent tantrum, is a further drama. An encounter by the fountain means one thing to the child watching from the window, quite another to the participants. McEwan's use of Briony as a watcher who does not quite see is chillingly effective and disturbing: "Briony had her first, weak intimation that for her now it could no longer be fairy-tale castles and princesses, but the strangeness of the here and now, of what passed between people . . . and how easy it was to get everything wrong, completely wrong."
This is a novel of strong characterisation, all the more impressive considering that his presence as an intense, all-seeing omniscient narrator has meant that McEwan has never really emerged as a creator of characters but rather as a writer intent on exploring psychological torment and confused emotion at their blackest. Here however he enters the minds of his players. He looks at the two elder Tallis children, Cecilia, the bored eldest daughter, and Leon, now adults yet determined to retain their childhood selves. Briony's transitional state is observed by her sad mother Emily, finally conceding her baby is leaving childhood behind.
Yet aside from Briony, the character McEwan comes closest to is Robbie. Now a young man, he has suddenly discovered freedom, a freedom he has earned through exam success. With freedom comes a new courage. Robbie decides to act. Lives turn on the despatch of the wrong note. Even as the pace speeds up to include an urgent, authentic sex scene, the narrative never loses its deliberate, thoughtful quality.
Aside from the story which carefully conceals its twists and turns, the elegance of the prose never falters. Throughout his career, war has featured in McEwan's fiction. Here, through terrifying, vivid sequences, conflict is seen as the backdrop to a heroic, romantic quest - the soldier is a knight engaged in an impossible task. The use of the quest device works well in a novel of literary allusion and cross reference from Richardson, to Austen, Hartley and, as mentioned, Waugh and Woolf.
Yet aside from its place in Robbie's experiences, the section about the exodus at Dunkirk is unforgettable. McEwan as a writer has always been able to shock but here, as throughout Atonement, there is a depth of humanity and feeling of such subtle force as to leave the reader staring at the images, emotions and words on the page.
It is a love story and one that seems to draw on that familiar British theme of class conflict. But it goes far beyond that. Atonement is not an exercise in glorifying Britain's quasi-romantic past. A family is torn apart. Individual dreams, hopes and lives are lost. Briony emerges as a remarkable character but also as an unlikely hero, doomed as she is to live with the weight of her mistake. As long ago as 1981, Ian McEwan, with his second novel, The Comfort of Strangers, shortlisted for that year's Booker Prize, was hailed as one of the great hopes of British fiction. Since then he has been a consistent presence. His early narratives were macabre, lethal, strange, even sick, but always convincing, and dangerously well written. The Child in Time (1987), in which a simple visit to the supermarket develops into the nightmare loss of a child, heralded a new humanity in his work, but the darkness persisted with the psychological drama of The Innocent (1990) and Booker shortlisted Black Dogs (1992). Enduring Love (1997) impressed initially but tapered off poorly.
He won the Booker Prize in 1998 with Amsterdam, a slight though sympathetic morality tale. It seemed an unlikely novel for the intense, surreal McEwan to write. Atonement, with its pain and humour, is the finest achievement of his career.
Only Australian Peter Carey with True History of the Kelly Gang could possibly prevent him from winning this year's Booker Prize. There has only been one double winner to date: South African J.M.Coetzee with Life and Times of Michael K in 1983 and, again two years ago, with Disgrace. Carey won in 1988 with Oscar and Lucinda. His recreation of Ned Kelly is magnificent, but McEwan's superbly subtle evocation of innocence, imagination, revenge and regret is a profound, memorable performance.
Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times
