Ian Russell McEwan

• multi-talented artist: novelist; film &TV script-writer/ screenwriter;

librettist (musical theatre); playwright
• born on June 21, 1948
• grew up partly in Hampshire, S-W of London
• father = a Scot, working-class then joined the British Army (Singapore,
Libya…)
• childhood largely spent abroad
• mother had had 2 older children from an earlier marriage (estranged) +
McEwan’s long-lost biological brother (had been given up for adoption
during WW2) (// motif of brotherhood and sisterhood in IME’s fiction)
• graduated in English and French + creative writing at the University of
East Anglia
Beginning of his literary career
1972: first story, “Homemade”
1975: First Love, Last Rites (1975), collection of short stories - sexualisation of young children and violence in relationships
(recurrent theme). Won the Somerset Maugham Award for 1976.
1978: In Between the Sheets, collection of short stories + The Cement Garden, first short novel.
Film and television scripts:
• 1976: first broadcast of “Jack Flea's Birthday Party” (written in 1974)
• 1979: adaptation of the short story “Solid Geometry”, halted by the BBC, eventually produced in 1980.
• 1980: “The Imitation Game”, a story of sexual politics within English patriarchy (BBC)
• …
1980s and 1990s:
• 1981: second novel, The Comfort of Strangers
= “the literature of shock” / story of a tourist couple who become
involved with a local man who proves to be a sadistic murderer /
reference to Tennessee Williams' 1947 play A Streetcar Named Desire
• Or Shall We Die? = oratorio (lyrical composition for orchestra), about
the threat of nuclear war
1984: elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society of Literature.
• 1987: third novel, The Child in Time, Whitbread novel prize, adapted
in 2017
Travelled to the Soviet Union as part of a delegation from European
Nuclear Disarmament (END)
• 1990: The Innocent, a Cold War spy story
• 1992: Black Dogs
• 1995: The Daydreamer, 7 interconnected stories about
transformations, journeys and adventures, told by an adult
(mis)remembering his childhood (// Atonement)
• 1997: Enduring Love on unwanted, misguided love. Unreliable
narrator (// Briony in Atonement), adapted in 2004
• 1998: Amsterdam, Booker Prize. Black comedy
Stylistic “golden period”:

• 2001: Atonement
= a self-aware / self-reflexive / metafictional fiction
Adapted in 2007 (dir. Joe Wright)

• 2005: Saturday = about the “war on terror”, concerned with mental

states (Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s disease)
• 2007: On Chesil Beach = condensed narrative, family-focused, novella-
length. Concentrates on one honeymoon night, inability to understand or
talk about sexuality. Adapted in 2017
• 2008: For You = libretto
• 2010: Solar = novel, satirical comedy + novel about climate change
• 2012: Sweet Tooth = novel, London-set 1970s spy thriller
• 2014: The Children Act = responsibilities of the law in relation to minors
• 2016: Nutshell = dynamics of relationships, narrative perspective of a
soon-to-be-born baby

Strong social & political views: a “committed” writer?

Ian McEwan: Atonement (2001)

Genre: Metafiction + historical novel

Setting: England / France (WW2)

Structure: 3 sections & 3 genres

• Part 1 set in 1935 = country-house tradition
• Part 2 set in 1940, Robbie’s wartime experience
= war memoir (WW2)
• Part 3 set in 1940, Briony’s wartime experience
= homefront story of reconciliation
• + a coda set in London in 1999 (// epilogue, concluding
section formally distinct from the main structure, includes a
postmodern twist)

Novel ruled by the number 3: triads, triangles and three-way

relationships

Main trio of characters:

• Briony Tallis, a thirteen-year old with literary pretensions
• her older sister Cecilia
• Robbie Turner, the son of their family's cleaning lady
Part I
Set in 1935 = threat of the approaching war
Unity of time: one oppressively hot summer day, at the Tallis family estate north of London, England.

- Briony Tallis, the 13-year-old youngest daughter of 3, who aspires to be a writer: has written a play to be performed by
her cousins
- Briony’s sister Cecilia, down from Cambridge
- Robbie Turner, the son of the family charwoman: also down from Cambridge (Robbie educated at the expense of the
girls' father)

Episode of the broken Meisen vase / the fountain scene:

Briony looks out of a window and sees Robbie and Cecilia by the fountain. The pair are arguing over a Meissen vase they
have broken, pieces of which have dropped into the fountain. But all that Briony sees is her sister stripping down to her
underclothes to climb into the water = an innocent act, greatly misunderstood by the young imagination
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuNDd5dbLv4&t=10s&ab_channel=MB

Briony intercepts a letter from Robbie to Cecilia: discovers “perverse” desires and decides to protect her sister from Robbie.
She later intrudes on Cecilia and Robbie making love in the library and mistakes it for assault

Briony witnesses the rape of her older cousin Lola. She convinces everyone that the assailant was Robbie, who is taken to
jail
Part 2
Takes place five years later, in 1940
Robbie served 3 years in prison for his alleged crime
Mostly refracted through Robbie's thoughts

Focuses on:
- a few days of Robbie Turner's experiences during the war in May 1940
- his letters to Cecilia, or Cecilia’s letters to him

Follows Robbie Turner as he retreats through France as a soldier during the war.
Separated from his battalion, Robbie is marching through the countryside with two other corporals (+him = 3 men) trying
to get to the evacuation town of Dunkirk (Operation Dynamo)
The 3 men make it to Dunkirk which is in a state of utter chaos

Robbie is severely wounded but is determined to make it home to Cecilia who is waiting for him.

Watch the single-take, tracking shot Dunkirk scene in Atonement the movie:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmB7lgaojCY&ab_channel=ScreenBites
Part 3
1940, Briony’s wartime experience (now 18)
- has signed up as a nurse in London (as a penance for her sin), but
fails to perform her duty
- also an aspiring novelist: author of a novella “Two Figures by a
Fountain” (// part 1, fountain scene)

While Briony seeking out her older sister, she attends the wedding of
Paul Marshall (Lola's rapist) and Lola, but does nothing to stop the
marriage

When she visits her sister, she discovers that Robbie is still alive and
living with Cecilia
She admits her guilt and asks what she can do to repair her sin
Robbie & Cecilia give Briony a list of instructions to follow that will
help clear Robbie's name:
- writing a long letter of confession, or atonement, to Robbie
(// the novel?)
- Briony agrees and heads back to work in London
Coda / final section / epilogue
London, 1999, on Briony’s 77Th birthday
A letter from the author to the reader,
explaining how she documented the book
Briony attends a birthday party/family reunion
at her old home
= return to the country house of part one
(original scene of “the crime”)
Final postmodern twist:
Briony informs her reader that she has made up
the part about visiting Cecilia and Robbie in
London. Both died in the war
Writing their love into a book = her final
atonement?
= Metanarrative / Metafiction
• perspective & multiple points of view
• constant shifts between one or the other’s perspective, series of
streams of consciousness and inner thoughts
• “behind the scenes” in the coda
• novel = Briony's reworked version of the novella she sent to a
magazine? Or act of atonement to clear Robbie's name?
• story as fact or fiction? Or both?
• issue of authority: narrative authority + moral authority: no God,
no justice
• exploration of the role of the novelist (+ that of the reader) in a
world where there appears to be no justice (and no atonement
for the horrors of WW2)