Blog Post #3 - Atonement

Atonement by Ian McEwan is an exciting book. It follows the stories of many of the characters in it, diving deep into their thoughts in a very descriptive way. While reading this book, the description by McEwan stood out to me the most, it really reminds me of F. Scott Fitzgerald's writing in The Great Gatsby. With these intense descriptions come cool connections between Briony's thoughts/writing style and McEwan's writing style. In the beginning of the book, we are given a huge  description of Briony's likes and dislikes when writing. One of them is this,

"It was a relief not to be writing out the she saids, or describing the weather or the onset of spring or her heroine's face—beauty, she had discovered, occupied a narrow band. Ugliness, on the other hand, had infinite variation. A universe reduced to what was said in it was tidiness indeed, almost to the point of nullity, and to compensate, ever utterance was delivered at the extremity of some feeling or other..." (7).

In this we see that Briony prefers to describe ugliness over beauty, and in McEwan's writing there tends to be description of not only beautiful things, but also the ugly. In fact, when the Tallis' backyard is described much later, he points out the glass scattered across the ground, the burnt marks, and the crumbling "temple" (68-69). He doesn't describe it to make it sound beautiful, but instead is highlighting the important features of the scene.

These connections are interesting to me because I don't think I've actually read a book with a character that is passionate about writing. I can't help but think Briony's references are in some way McEwan's, and that he could have put his own style into Briony's.