Can anyone explain the ending of Atonement to me?

[Boyswillbeboys]

I've finally got round to reading the book, and haven't seen the film so not sure if it ends the same. I am a bit confused though ..
Did Briony tell her parents in the end? Did Robbie and Cecilia really survive the war? If they did, why didn't they come to her birthday party? And if she DID tell the truth, why was Pierrot there - surely he would have been loyal to Lola?

[CorpseBrideOfJohnCusack]

I hyaven't seen the film and prob won't bother

I quite liked the book but I don't particularly 'get' Ian MCEwan. too many bloody words

[witcheseve]

I only saw the film. AFAIK they never did meet up again, both died but Briony made up her version if they had of.

I loved the film even though I thought I wouldn't. Loved the library scene.

[Simplysally]

Lola was married when she was 20 and was raped when she was 15 (she is a couple of years older than Bryony). So that would be 5 years after the opening chapter - 1935/6? The party of Bryony at the end was partly so her playlet was performed 70 years after she wrote it .

I enjoyed the description of the dinner party at the start but a lot of the book was hard to wade through. I do struggle with Iain McEwan's work though.

[hester]

I didn't much like Birdsong, but the Pat Barker trilogy - that is fabulous.

[MrsBumblebee]

This has been bugging me, so I reread the last chapter last night. It makes it pretty clear that in 'real life' Briony doesn't go to visit her sister's lodgings because she can't face seeing her 'recently bereaved sister', suggesting that Cecilia has just heard about Robbie's death in France. It also makes it pretty clear (I think) that Robbie and Cecilia never met up after the time in the tearoom, when Briony says 'Who would want to believe that they never met again, never fulfilled their love?'.

It also explains that Briony hasn't told the truth publicly, because she and her publishers would be sued by Lola and her husband if she did. However, she's planning to tell the truth in her book, which won't be published until they're all dead.

What's still ambiguous is how much Briony has told her family, although I think the suggestion is that she hasn't told any of them the truth. With regard to Pierrot, it says in the last chapter that 'It's accepted that they never mention his sister', though it's not clear whether that's because they both hate her or because Pierrot knows that Briony has some sort of problem with her but agrees not to mention her so that he and Briony can still be close.

So there's my take on it, OP - HTH. But of course as others have said, the whole thing's ambiguous really, because it's all still a book, and the whole point of the ending is that authors can create whatever 'truth' they want.

[newpup]

I had to read the ending twice, too. Robbie and Cecelia both die in the war. Robbie dies at Dunkirk and Cee at the tube station in Balham. Briony writes an alternative ending to atone for her part in their deaths.

I have not seen the film though.

[slayerette]

Hester - was going to mention Regeneration. If you want a wartime book, that's the one to read. Set in WWI rather than II; based around the real-life meeting of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen at Craiglockhart hospital - it's just brillaint.

[slayerette]

or brilliant

[sleepyeyes]

Aww I love atonement I was reading it last year when I met my DH.

From what I can remember thinking at the time was that she made/re-wrote celia/robbie history a bit so at least in her imagination they were together and she could redeem herself.
I'm certain there is a point where she admits that's what she done and that she was lying to the reader, that they were alive and that she never did manage to atone her crime.