Ian McEwan’s symphonic novel of love and war, childhood andclass, guilt and forgiveness provides all the satisfaction of abrilliant narrative and the provocation we have come to expect fromthis master of English prose. On a hot summer day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Talliswitnesses a moment’s flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia,and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant and Cecilia’s childhoodfriend. But Briony’s incomplete grasp of adult motives–togetherwith her precocious literary gifts–brings about a crime that willchange all their lives. As it follows that crime’s repercussionsthrough the chaos and carnage of World War II and into the close ofthe twentieth century, Atonement engages the reader on everyconceivable level, with an ease and authority that mark it as agenuine masterpiece.