Atonement: Many questions, few answers

Atonement feels, very appropriately, like a culmination of all the ideas and puzzles contained in the previous books we have read, from Northanger Abbey, to Cloud Atlas, to Tristram Shandy, to Frankenstein, and Pale Fire. Like Catherine Moreland, its heroine has a severely wrong-headed perception of the how the world works. Like Cloud Atlas, each of its four parts has its own flavor, whether it is the romanticist feel of part one or the historical war fiction of part two. Like Frankenstein's story-within-a-story style, Atonement's events occur through various sources, such as the letters between Cecilia and Robbie and Nettle's account. Finally, like Tristram Shandy and Pale Fire, the narrator of the novel toys with our trust by reaching into the story and manipulating events to suit her personal agenda. All of these ideas are contained within the veneer of a linear, conventionally told narrative that makes Atonement a surprisingly digestible and emotional read like Frankenstein, but with the literary intricacies of Pale Fire.

Something that turned my mind inside out is the fact that Briony chooses to reveal at the end that the reunion between Robbie and Cecelia was made up. She claims to have done this for two particular reasons: firstly, had she written the novel with complete accuracy, its readers would be disappointed that Rob and Cee's story ended on such a grim note, after the avoidable and crushing event that takes place at the end of part one. Secondly, she wishes to atone for her crime by using her talents to unite the two in fiction. The thing is, Briony's shocking revelation is part of the overall narrative of Atonement. It is not some sort of afterword by the author; that would only be the case if this novel was non fiction. But Atonement is a fictional story, and because of that part four is an integral piece of the narrative that completely changes the entire nature of the story.

Now we have to start asking ourselves, just how accurate exactly is the story of Atonement? Briony claims to not just have had many, many versions of the story over the course of several decades, but to also be suffering from vascular dementia, a disease that wreaks havoc on one's mind. When we look within the story that Briony tells, we see how her youthfully warped sense of reality has an effect on those that would listen to her. When we look outside the story Briony tells and into the larger frame of the fourth part, we pick up on small clues that she drops, namely her mental illness and her having written many versions, and realize that for all we know, as we read Atonement we are in a very similar situation that the police, Emily Tallis, Lola and so on were put in when Briony falsely accused Robbie of rape. Of course, the consequences are nowhere as dire; this is a work of fiction after all. But it does point out the unbelievable power the author has over its readers. The author can grant readers a sense of comfort in knowing that they are reading a reliable narrative, or it can take away that comfort and stamp its identity all over the story, as is the case in Pale Fire. Most pertinently, however, it can reach beyond the page and manipulate the reader's perceptions of reality. Just look at some of the high profile criminal cases, such as OJ Simpson and Casey Anthony, or even the Iraq War, which was driven by politicians and their supporters who bought into the narrative of Saddam Hussein's pursuit of WMDs.

If there is one very important message to be taken away from the works we have read, it is to be wary of the presence of the author, whether it is a non fiction writer, a literary critic, or a journalist.