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This is, without doubt, a superb book. The writing is masterly. In the first part of the book the events are momentous but there's still a sense of drifting, going nowhere. It's unlike any McEwan that I've read before but it's a perfect evocation of that period just before the Second World War when we hurtled unknowingly, unthinkingly into Hell. The second part, when we follow Robbie at Dunkirk, is more the McEwan that I know and where he's possibly strongest. I could smell the battle and taste the defeat. It's an elegant refutation of the 'heroic rescue' which has found its place in British history. How small is Briony's crime in the context of such carnage?
It's a tribute to the book to say that it's very difficult to review. I have a feeling of being reluctant to mention an incident or a setting as it really should be met in the context of the story. It's complex, many-layered and brilliantly crafted. There are nods to so many other books, from ''Northanger Abbey'', to ''A Passage to India'', Margaret Atwood's ''The Handmaid's Tale'', even [[Henry James]]. I was left with a sense, not of pleasure at being reminded of those works, but regret that there were most certainly others that I didn't see.
I'm in a quandary. The book is undoubtedly brilliant but it left me feeling vaguely unsatisfied and I can only think that this comes down to two points. The first is that I found myself too conscious of the literary device of writing a book about writing a book, too conscious of just how clever McEwan is to really appreciate the story - which is, after all, why I read the book. The other point which worries me more is that I couldn't really warm to the characters and particularly Briony Tallis. Perhaps this is because McEwan was a man writing as a woman doing what mostly men would have done at the time he was writing about. Somewhere along the line it just didn't work for me.
