Life as Fiction - A Companion to Atonement by Ian McEwan

This is a reading companion for Atonement by Ian McEwan. It is not intended to be a formal study guide. This guide relates to the popular Vintage edition of Atonement (part of the Penguin Random House group) and the page numbers mentioned correlate to that version.

​​​​​​​This reading companion is ideally intended for students who would like to have a more informal way into the text although in truth anyone is welcome to read it. Atonement is a complex novel so I have decided to position this as a much lighter way to engage with it. This process started for me as a little guide for my own students that I began writing to help me plan lessons and it quickly got out of hand, morphing into something a lot bigger. In truth, this is more a labour of love than anything else and I hope that through reading this, you get a sense of that too.

Atonement is one of those texts that should really be read twice because so much of it takes on meaning when you look at it retrospectively. To reflect that, this book is essentially divided into two parts: the first part points you in the right direction in a short, concise way for your first reading accompanied by some themes to keep an eye on and some character notes, while the second part is a hugely comprehensive body of writing to accompany you as you read it a second time for deeper meaning. If you have already read the novel, please skip to the more comprehensive run-through as this will prove to be more engaging.