McEwan reminds me of Edith Wharton the way he is so relflective and descriptive of moods and feelings. He's not inventing anything new; his characters aren't feeling or doing anything that hasn't been felt or done under the sun, but the way he captures it is fresh and exact. Here is another passage about Emily Tallis, the mother of the house.
"She decided against closing the French windows, and sat down at one end of the Chesterfield. She was not exactly waiting, she felt. No one else she knew had her knack of keeping still, without even a book on her lap, of moving gently through her thoughts, as one might explore a new garden. She had learned her patience through years of sidestepping migraine. Fretting, concentrated thought, reading, looking, wanting--all were to be avoided in favor of a slow drift of association, while the minutes accumulated like banked snow and the silence deepened around her."
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Nice passage, Christine. I thought that the moments that involved Emily were sad, and frustrating. The result of her migranes has removed her as a parent, and yet she is still aware of the dynamics of the household, and even worries about Briony. She can't, doesn't change the path of the evenings events, and you are left wondering that if she had, if she were less crippled, would she have been able to detangle some of Briony's emotions before the damage was done. Nothing she feels or worries about, like her disdain of her sister, gets a voice, unless I am forgetting a moment.
What, nothing on the blog about Don's triumphant return to work?
And I did so think it revolved around me.
So I stop in B&N yesterday to pick up a book for my brother's birthday (The Music Lesson: A Spiritual Search for Growth through Music by Victor Wooten--don't ask me, it's what he wanted) and there's Don! Wearing his nametag and working! Beat that! Also there for the momentous day was DRD, otherwise known as Danika. After 4 and a half months away to heal a badly broken ankle, Don is back to read and sell more books than ever! Hooray!
Now I am on page 246 of 351, and I find myself reading a very different book than the one I started.
Part I of Atonement takes place in a quiet country estate in England in 1935. Part II takes place in France in May of 1940 during Operation Dynamo, when the British were retreating to Dunkirk for transport back across the Channel.
I was reading in bed quite late because I didn't want each awful account of war to be the last thing I read before sleep. Jim has read a lot about WWII, his father and uncles being veterans, but this is not my genre.
I am still struck by McEwan's crisp writing, but like everyone who lived through that terrible time, I am wanting the war to be over.
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