is Atonement sexist?

[paintandbrush]

Why?

I realise that it features a lot of female characters making poor choices, but the men aren't great either. There have been quite a few accusations of misogyny against McEwan for this one. Will anybody explain the logic behind it all?

No, to be fair, that would be a rubbish book!

Almond, that is a really good way of putting it - to write as if you know what is going on in other people's minds and then change the details of their lives - you have summed up perfectly why the ending of Atonement so disappointed and angered me and why I didn't feel it rang true. I actually could not believe that Briony had been the narrator all along. When a novel has an unreliable narrator such as Nick in Gatsby or Joe in Enduring Love (or any first person narrator, really), there are limitations to what that character can narrate about the other characters' thoughts and motives and, even when though they may attempt to do so, we as readers, acknowledge that this is only that characters' interpretations. When Briony is 'revealed' (the 'ha-ha-fooled you' moment, as Lass says) as the narrator all along, it's so unreal because she has been telling us about the in depth thoughts and feelings of Celia and Robbie and their intimate relationship which she just could not have been able to do as a fellow character. It makes a mockery of the whole book.

Interesting that you mentioned Amis - another brilliant but arguably misogynistic writer and I think he and IM are friends (I might be wrong about that). There is a very clever and unexpected twist with the narrator at the end of Amis' 'London Fields' - you don't think IM was inspired to do the same thing but just didn't quite pull it off?

When Briony is 'revealed' (the 'ha-ha-fooled you' moment, as Lass says) as the narrator all along, it's so unreal because she has been telling us about the in depth thoughts and feelings of Celia and Robbie and their intimate relationship which she just could not have been able to do as a fellow character. It makes a mockery of the whole book

I don't think the revelation makes a mockery of the book. The revelation is that the author of everything we have just read is Briony, not IM, and that has been the case for everything from the point Robbie is taken away at the end of the first part.

We have unwittingly been reading a novel within a novel. So from that point of view Briony can tell us as much as any author can about their characters' innermost feelings. The conventional unreliable narrator always remains a character but Briony goes beyond that. The trick is ( and it is a trick as far as I'm concerned) that Briony ceases to be a character in IM's novel and becomes the omnipotent author of her own novel.

I don't like the book because whilst this is superficially clever it then feels like a cheap trick to play on readers. But I don't think it is sexist.

Apologies for the OT ref back to Narnia/Susan but I wanted to answer the point - "it is perfectly clear that Susan can't come back to Narnia because she has become socially/sexually aware".

Absolutely not. It is quite clear that the way is open for Susan to come to Narnia (or the Platonic real-Narnia unveiled at the end) at some future point - she wasn't in the train accident so she is not present at the end of The Last Battle. And Susan as Queen Susan is socially and sexually aware in The Horse & His Boy when she is a fully-grown woman in Narnia and is courted by princes. Polly and Lucy and Jill are post-pubertal women when they die in the train accident - Lewis does not deny women a place in Narnia for being mature sexual beings. It is Susan herself who chooses not to be at Diggory and Polly's "Narnian reunion dinner" because she denies the reality and existence of Narnia - for now, at least.