To Atone or Not to Atone? Wider Reading 3: Atonement

"On the hottest day of summer, 1934, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis sees her sister Cecilia strip off her clothes and plunge into the fountain in the garden of their country house. Watching her is Robbie Turner, her childhood friend who, like Cecilia, has recently come down from Cambridge.

"By the end of that day the lives of all three will have been changed for ever. Robbie and Cecilia will have crossed a boundary they had not even imagined at its start, and will have become victims of the younger girl's imagination. Briony will have witnessed mysteries, and committed a crime for which she will spend the rest of her life trying to atone."

Many themes of an identity struggle can be identified here. One is that of the individual. Said crime will rob the three main characters of their identity, and for the whole book they will attempt to get them back. Another struggle is a social struggle. Robbie, being the gardener's son, was always far more likely to be blamed for the crime than its actual perpetrator; a well known chocolate magnate.

With the greater part of the story being set in wartime Britain, class struggle is also prevalent in this book and, in my opinion, the writer Ian McEwan narrates it perfectly. I enjoyed the ongoing mystery of the plot, as well as the shocking twist at the end. It's heartbreaking, and a superb achievement.

Atonement - Identity Quotations

To Kill a Stereotype? Wider Reading 2: Small Island

The racist past of Britain is well known, but I have never encountered it so well observed and honestly put as I have in Small Island.

Queenie Bligh's neighbours do not approve when she agrees to take in Jamaican Lodgers. Her husband Bernard is in hiding, traumatised by the war. Gilbert Joseph joined the RAF, but finds himself treated very differently by the people of London. And his wife, Hortense, disappointed by her marriage of convenience, also finds London far from the city of her dreams.

The struggle for identity experienced by many coloured people living in England is personified in the characters Hortense and Gilbert. Queenie too, lonely without her husband, struggles with her neighbours complaints at her lodgers. As these two women, against all odds, become friends, they also find their lives inexplicably entangled by one man, Michael Roberts.

"Small Island Explores a point in England's past when the country began to change. It is 1948, and England is recovering from a war. But at 21 Nevern Street, London, the conflict has only just begun."

Sexism or Science Fiction? Wider Reading 1: The Handmaid's Tale

"The Republic of Gilead offers Offred only one option: to breed. If she deviates, she will, like all dissenters, be hanged at the wall or sent out to die slowly of radiation sickness. But even a repressive state cannot obliterate desire - neither Offred's nor that of the two men on which her future hangs."

Set in a nightmare future world similar to that of 1984 or The Chrysalids, The Handmaid's Tale tells the story of a police state where women are bought, sold and traded like laying hens, food is scarce and bought with coupons and difference is dangerous.

Offred (Of Fred) lives with the Commander and his wife against her will, in order to give birth and help raise the sagging birth rate, the result of a collossal nuclear war. Due to the radiation stillbirths and deformities are common, and a live, healthy baby is everything. Despite her unhappiness Offred attempts to do her duty. In her attempt to find independence and identity she begins a secret affair, first with the Commander, and then with Nick, the driver.

I greatly enjoyed this book. It is in the science fiction genre, but deals with issues present in today's society, such as women's rights, police states and nuclear disarmament. The totalitarian state in which Offred lives is so chillingly described you find yourself transported to the middle of the action. The sardonic wit with which it is written made it very enjoyable to read, and the drip-feed of flashbacks narrating Offred's past made me want to read on.

The Handmaid's Tale - Identity Quotations

Up next: Small Island - To Kill a Stereotype?