Started Atonement and it is exactingly well written:
‘tiny frets about the household’ and ‘the stews of her untidied room.’
Does deliver the ‘tale’ in a crafted, thoughtful style…but it has not ignited any resonances for me yet so will carry on…it is trying to be Virginia Woolf with its evocation of the pastoral past…but without the palpably realised intimacies that are created via Woolf’s glancing expression… this is too coldy self-conscious for me..it’s crystalline – aridly intellectual and not really sure why he has to be so…he is not exploring the territory of suffocating repression and ‘missed lives ‘ that is Ishiguro’s tour de force The Remains of the Day….and so far I really don’t care about this world or its words ..
Atonement seems very literary and self-reflexive. Bookish and clever…polish that pinkie ring Ian!
Prefer Graham Swift’s grasp of fallibility and secret shame in his novels any day….SO FAR!
will read on!
