Ian McEwan’s masterly examination of memory and imagination, nominated for the Booker prize in 2001, opens at a gathering of the Tallis family at their country pile, where the youngest daughter Briony is recruiting her cousins to perform in a play. It is a baking hot summer in 1935 and 13-year-old Briony, who has a thirst for drama, is irked when the others don’t share her enthusiasm for performance.
Then she witnesses a disturbing scene from her bedroom window. Her sister Cecilia and Robbie, son of the Tallis’s charlady, are in heated conversation by the fountain in the garden, after which Cecilia strips to her underwear and submerges herself underwater for several seconds. Later that day, Robbie asks Bryony to pass on a letter to Cecilia in which he confesses his desire for her in explicit terms. Briony reads it and decides Robbie must be a wicked person, leading her to tell a lie that will have catastrophic consequences.
This new recording of Atonement is exquisitely read by the Succession actor Harriet Walter, who also played Mrs Tallis in Joe Wright’s film adaptation. Her brisk RP tones are well matched to this portrait of an upper-class family where dysfunction and desire simmer beneath the surface. The second part of the novel shifts to 1940 where the adult Briony, now alert to the nuances of that fateful day, is racked with remorse at her actions. Here, McEwan pulls off a bold narrative trick that causes the listener to question the foundations of his storytelling and the nature of fiction.
• Available via Penguin Audio, 13 hr 38 min
Further listening:
Anil’s Ghost
Michael Ondaatje, Penguin Audio, 9 hr 27 min
Nimmi Harasgama narrates Ondaatje’s fourth novel in which a Sri Lankan anthropologist returns to her homeland to identify some bones with an alarming history.
Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies
Maddie Mortimer, Picador, 12 hr 20 min
Lydia Wilson and Tamsin Greig read this lyrical novel documenting a mother-daughter relationship and a woman’s battle with her body.
