Book Log 2022 #31: Atonement by Ian McEwan

The combination of an interest in writing and an active imagination is typically a good thing - how would we get books otherwise? - but in the personage of Briony Tallis, they prove damaging on a generational scale.  Her interpretation of things seen and read during a particular day in 1935 cause her act in a way that cause permanent injury to family and friends.  We see how she came to act the way she did, and how her actions played out in the future, over the course of the novel.

As much as I appreciated the writing and the nuanced way history played out over the course of the book, I had a hard time not thinking about what drove Briony to make the decisions she made. She was young (13 in 1935) and not particularly experienced, and the way her interior life seemed to influence her behavior made me wonder if she had an undiagnosed ASD (to the extent one could diagnose such a thing at the time). But it could just be that she's kind of a monster.

And just to put a cherry on top, the book also has a bit of a twist at the end that may change how you view everything that happened before it.