This week’s passage is from Atonement by Ian McEwan. I read Fight Club before watching the movie, read No Country for Old Men before watching the movie, but Atonement one of the few books whose movie version I watched first.

It helps to see the movie so you know what’s coming. Because this book drags, particularly at the beginning. Had I not known what was going to happen, I would’ve put it down.

I love the ending passage, but I ultimately decided not to put it here. I went with a passage instead that helps explain why Briony stuck to a story that ruined two lives:

Children hated generously, capriciously. It hardly mattered. But to be the object of adult hatred was an initiation into a solemn new world. It was promotion.

Or perhaps not, when you see how many people grow older but not up.