Ian McEwan

1. Talk about the tone of this novel. Is it ironic? Humorous? Menacing? 2. Think about Clive and Vernon and your feelings about each at different stages of the novel. Did those feelings change? If so, at what key points? 3. In a relatively short novel, the author devotes many pages to Clive's creative process. What do you think of the author's description of the process itself and of his decision to give it so much space? 4. At one early point in the novel, Vernon Halliday thinks this about himself, '[H]e was infinitely diluted; he was simply the sum of all the people who had listened to him, and when he was alone, he was nothing at all.' Discuss this prescient statement, in light of Vernon's fate. 5. Discuss the role of lucky (and unlucky) coincidence in the novel: Vernon's rise in his profession due to 'Pategate' or the story in the Judge about euthanasia in Holland that leads Clive and Vernon there. 6. Talk about the author's skill in showing the workplace; the composer's process and studio; the newspaper editor's office. 7. This novel is funny — the Siamese twins story, the sub-editor who could not spell — talk about the role of humor in the novel. 8. At different points in the novel, both Clive and Vernon think that Clive has given more to their friendship than Vernon has. Talk about the form and course of their friendship. Can friendships ever be equal? 9. The author suggests that years and success narrow life. Is this true to your experience? 10. The author withholds information throughout the novel, offering bits that are only fully developed later (the photographs of Garmony, the importance of the 'medical scandal in Holland'). Talk about the author's use of suspense. 11. How shaky is Clive's moral foundation? Should he be allowed to condemn his fellow artists who 'assume the license of free artistic spirit' and renege on commitments, even as Clive ignores the plight of a woman he witnesses being attacked? 12. Vernon wants to crucify Garmony for the greater good of the republic. Is this ever a valid reason to go after a politician? Do you agree with Clive that Vernon is betraying Molly's trust? Or do you side with Vernon in his wish to stop a vile leader from gaining power? 13. Talk about the parallels between the fictional political scandal the author creates and the real one that has occupied Washington, D.C., for the past year. Is the author commenting on U.S. politics and media with this novel? 14. Is everybody in Amsterdam a hypocrite? 15. Clive thinks he's a genius. How do you define genius? Does Clive fit the definition? 16. Talk about Molly and the importance of her role in the novel. Are there other examples in literature of characters who carry great weight and importance even though they never appear? 17. At Allen Crags where Clive watches the woman and man struggle, the author writes, 'Clive knew exactly what it was he had to do....He had decided at the very moment he was interrupted.' Was there any question in your mind at that point about what Clive's decision was? Were you correct? 18. What do you make of the author's choice to have Clive die happy, that is, unaware that he's been poisoned, but to have Vernon grasp in his last seconds '...where he really was and what must have been in his champagne and who these visitors were.'

Now a major BBC drama starring Benedict Cumberbatch ‘Only Ian McEwan could write about loss with such telling honesty’ Benedict Cumberbatch On a routine trip to the supermarket with his daughter one Saturday morning, Stephen Lewis, a well-known writer of children’s books, turns his back momentarily. When he looks around again, his child is gone. In a single moment, everything is changed. The kidnapping has a devastating effect on Stephen’s life and marriage. Memories and the present become inseparable – as Stephen gets lost in daydreams of the past – and time bends back on itself, dragging Stephen’s own childhood back into the present.

On the hottest day of the summer of 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis sees her sister, Cecilia, strip off her clothes and plunge into the fountain in the garden of their country house. Watching her is Robbie Turner, her childhood friend who, like Cecilia, has recently come down from Cambridge. By the end of that day, the lives of all three will have been changed forever. Robbie and Cecilia will have crossed a boundary they had not even imagined at its start, and will have become victims of the younger girl's imagination. Briony will have witnessed mysteries and committed a crime that creates in her a sense of guilt that will color her entire life. Ian McEwan has in each of his novels drawn the reader brilliantly into the intimate lives and situations of his characters. But never before has he written on a canvas so large: taking the reader from a manor house in England in 1935, to the retreat to Dunkirk in 1941, to a London hospital soon after where the maimed, broken, and dying soldiers are shipped from the evacuation, to a reunion of the Tallis clan in 1999. Atonement is Ian McEwan's finest achievement. Brilliant and utterly enthralling in its depiction of childhood, love and war. England and class, it is at its center a profound-and profoundly moving-exploration of shame and forgiveness, of atonement and the difficulty of absolution.