Ian Russell McEwan• English novelist and screenwriter• The Times featured him on their list of "The 50

greatest British writers since 1945".• Major works: Enduring Love , Sweet Tooth,

The Children Act, Amsterdam, The Cement Garden, Atonement, The Comfort of Strangers.

• He won the Man Booker Prize for Amsterdam (1998).

CharactersBriony Tallis

The Younger sister of Leon and Cecilia Tallis. Briony is an aspiring writer.Briony is part narrator, part character and we see her transformation from child to women as the novel progresses.

Cecilia Tallis

The middle child in the Tallis family, Cecilia fallen in love with her childhood companion Robbie Turner.When Robbie is falsely accused of rape shortly after,Cecilia loses her love to jail and war, and chooses not to contact any members of her family.

Leon Tallis

The eldest child in the Tallis family,Leon return home to visit. He brings his friend Paul Marshall along with him on his trip home .

Emily Tallis

oEmily is the mother of Briony , Leon, and Cecilia. Emily is ill in bed.

Robbie Turner

Robbie is the son of Grace Turner,who lives on the grounds of Tallis family.Having grown up with Leon, Briony Cecilia, he knows the family well.

Robbie is sent to jail when Briony falsely accuses him of raping Lola.

Grace Turner•The mother of Robbie Turner, she was given permission from Jack Tallis to live on the ground.•When her son is falsely accused of raping Lola, only she and Cecilia believe he is innocent, and Grace chooses to leave the Tallis family.

Lola Quincey•A 15-year-old girl who is Briony, Cecilia, and Leon's cousin. She comes, along with her twin brothers, to stay with the Tallises after her parents' divorce. •She is also subject to rape while staying at the Tallis household. Lola appears later in the novel as a mature woman, married to Paul Marshall

Paul Marshall

A friend of Leon. He allegedly rapes Lola outside the Tallis household after dark ;Briony however, accuses Robbie of Lola's rape, and many years later Lola and Paul marry.

Jackson & Pierrot Quincey

Lola’s younger twin brothers and Briony,Cecilia, and Leon's cousin. They come, along with their sister, to stay with the Tallises after their parents' divorce.

Jack Tallis- Jack is the father of Briony, Cecilia, and Leon. Jack often works late nights and it is alluded to in the novel that he is having an affair.

Corporal Nettle & Corporal Mace- Robbie’s Two companions during the Dunkirk evacuation.

Plot Summary• Part One Briony Tallis, a 13-year-old English girl with a

talent for writing, lives at her family's country estate with her parents. Her older sister Cecilia attends the University of Cambridge with Robbie Turner, the son of the Tallis family housekeeper and a childhood friend of Cecilia.

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In the summer of 1935, Briony's cousins, Lola and twins Jackson and Pierrot, visit the family. Briony witnesses a moment of sexual tension between Cecilia and Robbie from afar.

Briony misconstrues the situation and concludes that Robbie is acting aggressively toward Cecilia. Robbie, meanwhile, realises he is attracted to Cecilia, whom he has not seen in some time, and writes several drafts of a love letter to her, giving a copy to Briony to deliver.

Later on at a family dinner party, attended by Briony's brother Leon and his friend Paul Marshall, it is discovered that the twins have run away and the dinner party breaks into teams to search for them.

In the darkness, Briony discovers her cousin Lola, apparently being raped by an assailant she cannot clearly see. Lola is unable or unwilling to identify the attacker, but Briony decides to accuse Robbie and identifies him to the police as the rapist, claiming she has seen Robbie's face in the dark. Robbie is taken away to prison, with only Cecilia and his mother believing his protestations of innocence.

Part two By the time that World War II has started, Robbie has spent several years in prison. He is then released on the condition of enlistment in the army to fight in the war. Cecilia has trained and become a nurse. She has cut off all contact with her family because of the part they took in sending Robbie to jail. Robbie and Cecilia have only been in contact by letter, since she was not allowed to visit him in prison. Before Robbie has to go to war in France, they meet once for half an hour during Cecilia's lunch break. At the end of part two, Robbie falls asleep in Dunkirk, one day before the evacuation.

Briony realised the full extent of her mistake, and decides it was Paul Marshall, Leon's friend, whom she saw raping Lola. Briony still writes, although she does not pursue it with the same recklessness as she did as a child.

Briony attends the wedding of her cousin Lola and Paul Marshall before finally visiting Cecilia. Briony meets Robbie unexpectedly at her sister's. They both refuse to forgive Briony, who nonetheless tells them she will try and put things right.

Part Three

She promises to begin the legal procedures needed to exonerate Robbie, even though Paul Marshall will never be held responsible for his crime because of his marriage to Lola, the victim.

Last part

oThe fourth section, titled "London 1999", is written from Briony's perspective. She is a successful novelist at the age of 77 and dying of vascular dementia.It is revealed that Briony is the author of the preceding sections of the novel. Although Cecilia and Robbie are reunited in Briony's novel, they were not in reality.oIt is suggested that Robbie Turner may have died of septicaemia - caused by his injury - on the beaches of Dunkirk, and Cecilia may have been killed by the bomb that destroyed the gas and water mains above Balham Underground station.

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