Shades of Gray Getting Around to A Book He Should Have Read A While Ago: Atonement

Let me tell you a story.

In 1995, a young man named Ralph Parker lost control of his car, going off the road and into a crowd of young people at a bus stop. 15 year old Renee Lee Orichefsky and her 13 year old sister Danielle were killed.

Ten years later, their family, along with their friends and neighbours and a church that sits just behind where the terrible accident occurred held a memorial service for the girls, which I covered for the Herald. It was the most amazing, remarkable, moving thing I've ever seen in my life, and I don't seriously expect it to be topped.

The family forgave him. They forgave him without exception, without grudge or bitterness, and they embraced him after he went, weeping, to the microphone to ask for their forgiveness. They gave it before he went up. They had given it to him, unasked for, in an interview I did with Joseph Orichefsky before the service, because they wanted him to be there. I almost cried watching first Orichefsky and then Parker speak.

I would imagine that perhaps one person, one family in a million, has the capacity for that sort of forgiveness. It took the Orichefskys ten years to do it, which I would argue is a remarkably short time for this sort of thing. And while it was the Orichefskys' mercy that rightly caught the attention, Parker showed what I think was rare courage as well. It was, all around, truly amazing to see.

I thought about that morning after I finished Atonement, which has as its central theme the question of how one atones for, or forgives, the unforgivable. The crime in question, while definitely falling into the category of unforgivable acts, is less so, perhaps, than Ralph Parker and the Orichefskys' tragedy. That said, I don't think that there's much of a difference in the difficulty of forgiveness or atonement or the simple struggle to live with such a wrong either against you or by you unrighted, once you pass a certain point.

McEwan writes marvellously throughout the novel, conveying the experiences of his characters in such sharpness that the book flies by, even as the scenes stick with you. The second and third sections of the book, detailing the British Expeditionary Force's retreat to Dunkirk and the experience of nurses in London after the evacuation respectively, are especially well drawn, and serve to reinforce the characters' sufferings and joys without being distracting. It's a remarkable, remarkable book.

There are some flaws-I thought the character of Cecilia, the third major character, was a little thin, and the coda serves to undermine everything that went before, which was extremely annoying. McEwen at least seems to be putting the question of authors' sins against their characters in the same category as actual sins against actual people, which I thought was more than a little fatuous. That said, "all novels go off the boil at the end," and the dissection of remorse and forgiveness that preceds it more than makes up for it. The prose is a joy, the characters are closely observed, and the central question-prior to the epilogue-is dealt with in a way that seems completely right.

Because, as I say, the vast majority of us are not the Orichefskys, and of those of us who are most, thankfully, will not have to demonstrate it. That said, we must forgive one another our trespasses somehow, or we really will find it impossible to live together. And so we spend a lot of our time half-forgiving people, or being half-forgiven, in a way that's emotionally unsatisfying but necessary. Atonement looks at that dilemma at its most stark, and does it as well as any piece of writing I've seen.