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Date Posted: 17:31:02 01/25/08 Fri
Author: Autumn (infuriated)
Subject: Re: Briony's Atonement
In reply to: Sean Matson 's message, "Briony's Atonement" on 14:14:20 09/26/07 Wed

Granted I have just finished reading Atonement so my outrage is a bit fresh, but I believe Briony is the same self involved child in 1999 that she was at the opening of the story. She intimates as much, feeling that she is the same youthful girl even as she is 77 and facing her immortality. By spending her life writing draft after draft of the story of her "crime" and the devestating effects it had on the lives of her sister and Robbie she gets exactly what she wished for even before the lie was told. She is a parasite. A parasite that can fancify and dramatise the lives of her host, but no less a parasite. Parasites don't apologize for what they are, and I cannot grasp a real apology or atonement in the entirety of her story. Her play was her attempt to send a moral lesson to her much older brother about his seriousness in relationships. Briefly mentioning the superb father he turns out feels like a weak attempt at dismissing her childhood ignorance and assumption, a weak apology without any cognition on her part of her continual pattern of dramatising and attempting to control the lives of her family. That her attempt at atonement fails doesn't seem to pain her in the least. Worse than that is seems to fuel her conviction that to be godlike in her authorship is worth everything that has happened. The entire rest of the story seems a cheap theft of her sisters life. If this, as she implies, is what it is to be an author I do wonder at the feelings of Mr. McEwan himself. I love this story because even as I am typing I feel myself becoming aware of my own Briony-like stupidity, questioning whether I read each passage right, and sympathising with those who so foolishly jumped to the conclusion that he himself stole the life and story of another for literary success. The effect of the novel is as contagious as Briony's hysteria from her encounter with the adult world of cunts and maniacs. Can I say I love this novel too many times?

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