처음으로 읽은 Ian McEwan의 소설.

난 이 책을 읽고 그의 다른 소설을 사모았다.

이야기는 크게 두 파트로 나뉘어 질 수 있는데

주인공 Briony의 어린 시절과 그 이후이다.

그리 나쁜 의도 없이 행해진 어린 아이의 거짓말이

얼마나 많은 사람의 인생을 바꿀 수 있는지

더불어 용서와 속죄의 의미에 대해서도 생각하게 하는 이야기.

영국작가다 보니 단어의 사용이나 문장의 구성도 익숙치 않고

또 이 작가의 특징이 좀 문체가 길고 클라이막스가 없다.

하지만 읽으면 읽을 수록 빠져드는 매력이 뭔가가 분명 있다.

어렵게 읽어지는 소설이지만 읽고 나면 잘 읽었다는 생각이 드는 이야기다.

영화로 만들어진다는데 기대하고 있다.

Okay, so the book starts off in the Tallis family's upper class home in 1935, a few years before World War ll. The family is expecting their cousins and a visit from brother Leon. With people arriving, the house is in something of an uproar.

In the bustle, Robbie Turner, the son of the housekeeper, realizes he's fallen hopelessly, passionately in love with his childhood friend Cecilia Tallis. Cecilia jumps into a fountain in her underwear. Robbie accidentally gives Cecilia a letter he meant to destroy in which he tells her exactly what he wants to do with her. Then they do some of those things, not nearly privately enough, in the family library.

These embarrassing events are witnessed by Briony, Cecilia's imaginative 13-year-old sister. Spurred by confusion, and by her liking for making up stories, she decides that Robbie is a "maniac" who is after her sister. This results in disaster when the twins run away after dinner, and everyone races out to search for them in the dark. Briony finds Lola, who has been sexually assaulted, and sees a figure running away into the darkness. Though she does not see his face, she is convinced that it was Robbie, and accuses him to the police. Robbie is taken to prison, despite the protests of Grace Turner (his mother) and Cecilia, who pledges her love and promises to wait for him.

The novel now jumps several years to 1940. Robbie has been released from prison to join the British Expeditionary Force fighting in France against the Nazis. The war has gone horribly though, and so Robbie is trudging cross-country to the sea at Dunkirk, where he, his companions Mace and Nettle, and the rest of the British hope to be ferried across to England and safety. Robbie is wounded and increasingly delirious. He is sustained only by letters from Cecilia and his hopes for their future together. He finally collapses into sleep, waiting for the evacuation which is to begin the next day.

The narrative shifts to Briony. She is riddled with guilt since realizing that it wasn't Robbie who assaulted Lola. In part to try to atone for what she has done, she refuses to go study at Cambridge. Instead, to her mother's shock, she becomes a training nurse in London, where she cares for some of the first British soldiers wounded in the war.

Overall this was a good book to read, but sort of hard to understand.