The book opens in the summer of 1935, and Part One focuses on the events of two days at the country house of the wealthy Tallis family. Here, the story is mostly focalised through the youngest member of the family, Briony, a highly imaginative 13-year-old. A shocking event occurs which has serious consequences for several characters, especially Robbie Turner, the son of the Tallis family's cleaning lady, who is sent to prison. In Part Two, the action moves to Normandy in May 1940. Robbie, now a private soldier in the British Army, is trying to find his way to Dunkirk to be evacuated. Part Three takes place at the same time and focuses on Briony, who is now 18 and has given up a place at Cambridge to nurse wounded soldiers. The novel’s final part moves forward to 1999. Briony is a successful novelist, celebrating her 77th birthday and reflecting on the events of the summer of 1935 and their repercussions.
Part One of Atonement evokes an idyllic English summer in a country house which at first sight seems far from any external threat. Its setting symbolises the solidity of the past: ‘It was a scene that could easily have accommodated, in the distance at least, a medieval castle…’ Yet there are hints of fragility and decay: the island temple, an eighteenth-century folly, has ‘a mottled, diseased appearance’ and its ‘exposed laths, themselves rotting away, showed through like the ribs of a starving animal’. A twenty-first-century reader is likely to pick up on the subtext: war is on the horizon and this type of privileged lifestyle is under threat.
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