Atonement, by Ian McEwan

 

Atonement, by Ian McEwan

Characters

Part One - 1935

Briony Tallis Emily – mother Jack – father Cecilia – older sister Leon – older brother   Cousins: Lola – 15 Jackson and Pierrot – twins Hermione (Emily’s sister) and Cecil – parents, divorced   Staff Robbie Turner – Grace’s son (cleaning lady), schooling financed by Jack Hardman – handyman Danny Hardman – son Betty – cook   Paul Marshall – Leon’s friend   “The Trials of Arabella”

Part Two – WWII

Robbie – released after serving 3 ½ years in jail following night in Part One   Corporal Nettle – lorry driver Corporal Mace – cook   Cecilia – left family, nurse

Part Three – Hospital

Briony – student nurse Fiona – friend   Sister Marjorie Drummond   Lola and Paul Marshall married   Cecilia and Robbie – both died in 1940

Part Four - 1999

Briony, age 77 – vascular dementia   Lola and Paul – philanthropists

 

 

For Discussion:

NOTE: Page numbers are from the hardback edition.

1.       Section One ended without any information about the missing twins.  Did that bother you?

2.       At the beginning of chapter thirteen the author wrote, “Within the hour Briony would commit her crime” (page146).  At the time, what do you think she did?

3.       When Briony found Lola, she never said who had attacked her.   Briony said, “It was Robbie, wasn’t it?” (page 156) and Lola did not correct her.   Why do you think she did not correct Briony?  Is she also complicit in the event?

4.       At one point later on, Lola said to Briony, “It might not have been him” (page 161).  Briony replied, “You wouldn’t be saying that if you’d been with me in the library” (page 161).  Was Briony actually punishing Robbie for what he did with Cecilia?  What part did the letter from Robbie to Cecilia play in her actions?

5.       Briony’s family knew how much she liked to write stories.  Should they have questioned her more or investigated what happened more?  Why were they so quick to accept her story?

6.       Why do you think Briony kept quiet about the truth for so long?   Why didn’t she do something when Robbie was sent to jail?  Was her age at the time any excuse?

7.       What part did Chapter Two about Robbie’s time in the war play in the overall story?

8.       Discuss Briony’s time as a student nurse.  Before her training was complete, she was working in the hospital for injured soldiers and made several mistakes:

a.       Page 275 – she almost dropped her end of the stretcher and, after getting the soldier in bed, waited instead of heading back to the ward

b.       Page 277 – She told an injured man he could not rest before a procedure because she was following protocol, but was corrected by a nurse                          

c.       Page 277 – She forgot and left injured men downstairs who she was going to bring up on the lift

She felt her training had been useful in obedience, but that “everything she understood about nursing she learned that night” (page 286).   What do you think she learned?  If you are a nurse, can you relate to this?  Does this hold true for other professions?

9.       The version of Briony’s novel in the book is the one that will be published after she, Lola and Marshall are dead.  How do you think the remaining relatives will feel about finally learning the truth?

10.   Did you understand that Cecilia and Robbie never were reunited and Briony never met with them and tried to tell others what really happened?  On page 350 Briony wrote, “Who would want to believe that they never met again, never fulfilled their love? … When I am dead, and the Marshalls are dead, and the novel is finally published, we will only exist in my inventions.”

11.   Discuss your reading experience.  Was there any time you were confused?

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin

NOTE: This novel had many words new to me.  There is a vocabulary quiz at the end!

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin

Characters

Games

Samson Mazer - Harvard Anna Lee – mother George Masur – father Bong Cha – grandmother Dong Hyun – grandfather   Sadie Green Sharyn – mother Alice – sister, childhood leukemia, Dr. Alice Green Freda Green – grandmother   Dov Mizrah – Sadie’s professor at MIT   Marx Watanbe – Sam’s roommate, partner in Unfair Games   Naomi Watanabe Green – Sadie and Marx’s daughter   Unfair Games Sam and Sadie Marx Dov – producer and equity partner Zoe Cadogan – composer Simon Freeman Anthony Ruiz “Ant” Gordon, receptionist

Sadie’s class project games: Emily Blaster Solution   Ichigo: A Child of the Sea   Ichigo II: Go, Ichigo, Go   Both Sides Mapletown – Alice Ma, cancer (two worlds – hospital and outside the hospital) Myre Landing – Rose the Mighty   The Maplewood Experience – MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) Free – money earned from maintenance   Mayor Mazer – Sam’s avatar in Mapletown   Counterpart High – four games, one for each year of high school   Master of the Revels Master of the Revels: The Scottish Expansion (Had an Easter Egg of Marx hidden by Sadie)   Oregon Train Dr. Edna Daedalus Emily Alabaster Brown

 

For Discussion:

NOTE: Page numbers are from the hardback edition.

1.       When you first started the book, what were your thoughts – confusion, stepping into the unknown, pleasant anticipation, or something else?

2.       Was it right for Sadie to consider the time she spent with Sam in the hospital as community service?  Her grandmother, Freda Green, did not think so.  She told Sadie that is might hurt Sam’s feelings “if he thinks he is charity to you, and not a genuine friendship” (page 23).

3.       In Sadie’s class, Dov said that the game designer had to think about the player at all times and that, “There is no artist more empathetic than the game designer” (page 44).  What did you think about this?

4.       Could anything have been done to heal the divide between Sam and Sadie?  Starting with the release of Ichigo II, Sadie felt that Sam was always taking the credit.   Also, they each felt they moved to California for the other one, not themselves.

5.       As you were reading, did you think that Sam and Sadie would somehow end up together?  Would that have worked? 

6.       Discuss the various characters.  Were there any you did not like at all?   Did the author do a good job of describing each person?

7.       Section VII when Marx is killed (The NPC) and section IX (The Pioneers), were written in different styles that the rest of the novel.  Did you like this? Was it effective?  Did the different writing styles help you understand the shooting and death from Marx’s point of view and the video game differently.

8.       The novel had many thoughts on life and success in general, such as:

a.       Page 80 – “How your sense of self could change depending on your location.”

b.       Page 219 – Dov to Sadie about failure: “You take advantage of the quiet time that a failure allows you…You try again. You fail better.”

c.       Page 247 – “The most successful people are also the most able to change their mindsets.”

Do you agree with these statements?  Were there other ideas in the book that you thought insightful?

9.       Did reading this book cause you to think differently about computer and video games?  For example, on page 18 Sam said playing video games requires hand-eye coordination and observing patterns.   And when Sadie was going to visit Sam in the hospital to play games, the author wrote that to play with another person, “means allowing yourself to be open, to be exposed, to be hurt” (page 21).

10.   Also, Marx’s mother, Mrs. Watanabe who taught textile design, told Sadie, “Computers are great for experimentation, but they are bad for deep thinking” (page 230).  Do you agree?

11.   Why was this book on the New York Times hardcover best seller list for almost a year?

12.   What were your thoughts about the book when you were finished?   Would you recommend it to a friend?  Do you think different age groups would read the book differently?

 

 

 

 

 

Vocabulary Quiz!!!

(Answers are at the bottom of the page.  No peeking!)

 

_____ 1. grok (page 77)                         

_____ 2. cicerone (page 65)                                

_____ 3. tautology (page 41)                              

_____ 4. collogue (page 131)                              

_____ 5. auteur (page 132)                                 

_____ 6. palimpsest (page 214)                         

_____ 7. turpitude (page 215)                            

_____ 8. susurrus (page 283) 

 

a.                  needless repetition of an idea

b.                  confer secretly

c.                   a soft murmuring or rustling sound

d.                  a guide

e.                  to understand completely and intuitively

f.                    depravity, a shameful act

g.                   filmmaker with distinct individual style

 

Answers:

1-e     2-d     3-a     4-b     5-g     6-h     7-f     8-c