Atonement

And so comes the close of yet another book... Except this one told of deceit, lies, wronged lovers, war (for all the adventure lovers and males among the readers!) Medical horror, and, most importantly, atonement. The characters are rich and well described, but lacking slightly in the human department. What I mean by "human" is to feel human emotions and act as a normal person would without the process being either overly analysed, or overly exaggerated by a keen author wishing to keep his name in the minds of the general public. Sure, you can have a good character who is perhaps a little too dramatised in an attempt to be human, and that is exactly what happened in Atonement; the characters were unbelievably well-written and well thought-out, but for the actual story and emotion that the whole book centres around, a real character is required to make it believable and slightly less annoying to a reader (ahem, meaning no one in particular...).

The character of Briony Tallis, the one who,essentially, gets the ball rolling, and gets Robbie Turner sent to prison for a crime he didn't commit, is a very interesting child indeed. She lives entirely in her imagination, and takes real life scenarios and dramatises them massively, makes then into a story to suit her fleeting fancies; most importantly, she does what I really don't like about the people in the book, and she dehumanises them. Everything on Planet Briony is horrifically over egged to fit into what she thinks a situation should typically be like, according to various fairy tales and stories that she hears all around her. For example, at that fateful moment by the fountain, she sees Robbie and Cecilia staring at each other over the antique vase and immediately pictures an ardent declaration of love and adoration from either party, and afterwards a marriage proposal, simply because she herself, the aspiring novelist had previously written a story about that very theme. She us a slightly detestable child who always seems to be bent on poking her nose into other people's business; that is, after all, the very crux of the issue at the heart of the book.

I could go on and on forever about this book, but unfortunately the fact that I am on my dad's Blackberry slightly detains my typing speed and my ability to properly spell words has been diminished noticeably (I swear, if that dotted grey line appears again under any word I type, I am actually going to throw this bloody thing at the wall...) And so I shall stop now. Next I'll be reading Tess Of The d'Urbevilles, so it might be a while until the next post!