Buy Study Guide "Atonement" is a book written in three major parts, with a final denouement from the author. Buy Study Guide. It's the task he set her. Summary: Briony, like the rest of London, is aware of the advancement and edge Germany is taking in the war. "Atonement" begins on joyous gossamer wings, and descends into an abyss of tragedy and loss. But by the end we know that Robbie didn't tell Briony anything; he died in the war. It focuses on Briony Tallis, the thirteen-year-old youngest daughter of three, who aspires to be a writer. Plot Summary. We start out at the Tallis family's very upper-class English home in 1935, a few years before World War II. Part 1, Chapter 1. The city is preparing for a full-blown German invasion. Her cousins, 15-year-old Lola Quincey and 9-year-old twins Jackson and Pierrot Quincey, are coming to stay with the Tallises because their parents are embroiled in a divorce. The soldiers were pushed back over the channel and the buzz bombings of London are about to begin. In real life, she never saw Cecilia after she left the family, and Cecilia and Robbie never had a last tender moment in her apartment before he left with the BEF.

Instead, he died at Dunkirk of septicemia, waiting to be evacuated. Atonement Summary and Analysis of Part Three: Pages 297-330. Atonement Introduction + Context. Atonement Summary Next. Atonement Summary. The novel is not just about atonement, but is the atonement itself. And then some of it doesn't, which can get the plot even more tangled. Its opening scenes in an English country house between the wars are like a dream of elegance, and then a 13-year-old girl sees something she misunderstands, tells a lie and destroys all possibility of happiness in three lives, including her own. Briony Tallis is a literary, self-important 13-year-old who lives in an English country estate in 1935. Atonement Summary. A lot happens in Atonement. Briony Tallis, a 13-year-old English girl with a talent for writing, lives at her family's country estate with her parents Jack and Emily Tallis. Check out our revolutionary side-by-side summary and analysis.

Atonement Epilogue Summary & Analysis | LitCharts. Part One tells the story of one day/night in 1935 at the Tallis family estate north of London, England. The foregoing narrative had been one she created for her book, as an act of atonement for what she did to Robbie and Cecilia. Her older sister Cecilia has recently graduated from the University of Cambridge with Robbie Turner, the Tallis family housekeeper's son and Cecilia's childhood friend (Robbie received a first in English while Cecilia received a "humiliating third"), with whom she eventually develops a relationship. Robbie tells Briony to write him a long letter explaining why she did what she did, and the novel is that letter.