self-assessment

Well, it is always difficult to say good words for me. I'll try.

When I knew that we need to do blog while home reading, I was very shocked, because I never express my emotions about books like this. Choosing a book was very long, a process of it's reading too. But I did it! I'm very proud of myself  :D
I hope, in the future we'll continue to do tasks like this one. I guess, hard work and experience will help us later in our jobs. Certainly, I want to say THANK YOU to Anastasia Genad'evna for so unusual task!

peer assessment

The most close blog for me is Mary's. Because I read this book and could understand it. I got a lot of positive emotions while I was reading it. Comment: http://mashahigh1994.blogspot.ru/2012/11/i-chose-book-part-two.html?showComment=1355826816269#c366214890166810617
Also, the prettiest book is Ul'yana's book "Bridget Jones's Diary". I think it's very lovely novel that will good for sentimental women. Comment: http://ulyanamotcheva.blogspot.ru/2012/09/my-choice-is-bridget-joness-diary.html?showComment=1355827495278#c672659132006641621
Although, every blog is wonderful. And everyone person deserve the attention and respect.

cultural aspects

First of all, society directly connect with the culture, because culture is the part of their life and their history. Without culture no society! The book "Atonement" and it's events link with the Great War. A half of the book is devoted to descriptions of it's horrible event! It is very important experience of the life of everyone, who take part in this war and not only their, but the relatives of these people and may be just close friends.

The book describe the life of typical English rich family, their behavior, habits, actions, words... A lot of things that were typical for these people. The typical England is described there too.

Well, many things are linking with the culture in this book, especially THE WAR.

P.S. We mustn't forget our history and our culture, which makes us like we are.

my emotions about the book

What I like about "Atonement":

• The story is perfect for women, who likes a beautiful and sentimental stories about love, so I am one of them.
• Wonderful author's style of narrative, which impressed me deeply.
• The story reflects the events from history, and it makes me to think that the book has a serious character.
• There is unpredictable plot.

What I dislike about "Atonement":

• The language is quite difficult for me.
• Unfortunately, the end of the book is unhappy.

opinions

I found some interesting comments about my book "Atonement" and it's author. Read with a pleasure!

"Subtle as well as powerful, adeptly encompassing comedy as well as atrocity, Atonement is a richly intricate book... A superb achievement."
- SUNDAY TIMES

"He is this country's unrivalled literary giant... a fascinatingly strange, unique and gripping novel."
- INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY

"The best thing he has ever written."
- OBSERVER

"McEwan's best novel so far, his masterpiece."
- EVENING STANDART

"The control he exerts over his material here is masterly... The story demands attention from the opening sentences, and plays with attention to rare effect. Here, then, we see an outstanding writer stretching himself to a new extreme. The result is superb."
- FINANCIAL TIMES

"Nobody writes about England and the English better than McEwan, and this is one of his most powerful novels."
- SUNDAY EXPRESS

"McEwan's new novel is art of the very highest kind... Atonement creates the pre-war atmosphere with a subtlety that is utterly compelling... A masterpiece."
- SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY

"A hugely entertaining novel. As he proved with Enduring Love, McEwan is a master of the page-turner... An intricately crafted, satisfying plot, all recounted in prose which is at once exacting and exhilarating... McEwan's best novel to date, which is saying a lot of a writer who is already up there among the small handful of the truly great."
- SUNDAY HERALD

imagine filming the story

Oh, if only I could make the film which reflect the story from this book, it was the same like the film "Atonement" by Joe Wright. This film impressed me deeply. He is very talented person.
I loved how at the beginning of the same episodes shown by the different characters. From that point picture seems brighter and more interesting.  Touching the theme of the actors and their characters, I must say that the couple of ​​Keira Knightley and James McAvoy, was imprinted in my subconscious as something inseparable - they perfectly complement each other, how much sincerity, how much power in every word, look, even in their silence felt something strong, heartbreaking.
But for me, I would make this wonderful story not a film, but a serial. Because it is very difficult to show all exciting moments, all main character's thought and actions. I would make it more disclosed. Every line in the book is important, and it is not allowed to miss one little, but major idea.

provide my own ending

Well, two part that I've read ended by Robbie and his friend's sleeping. Oh, I will tell you what happened.
The second part starts with the Robbie's narration, h.e. his life while the war was. When he was in the prison, all from there were started to prepare to the war with Germany, which separated Robbie from Cecilia's  letters and meetings. He was separate  from all, whose he loved...Mother, Cecilia.
This part consist of descriptions of time when Turner took part in the Great War.  A lot of blood, fears, pain; every word in this part full of these terrible things. The most excited moment was when Robbie tried to save lives of woman and her son.

<<A woman brushed past him carrying a crying child, then she changed her mind and came back and
stood, turning indecisively at the side of the road. ...Turner guided the woman through the gate. He wanted her to run with him into the center of the field. He had touched her, and made her decision for her, so now he felt he could not abandon her. But the boy was at least six years old and heavy, and together they were making no progress at all.
He dragged the child from her arms. “Come on,” he shouted.
With a free hand he was pulling on the woman’s arm.
The boy was wetting his pants and screaming in Turner’s ear. The mother seemed incapable of
running. She was stretching out her hand and shouting. She wanted her son back. The child was
wriggling toward her, across his shoulder. Now came the screech of the falling bomb. As he dropped to the grass he pulled the woman with him and shoved her head down. He was half lying across the child as the
ground shook to the unbelievable roar. The shock wave prized them from the earth. They covered
their faces against the stinging spray of dirt. They heard the Stuka climb from its dive even as they
heard the banshee wail of the next attack. The bomb had hit the road less than eighty yards away.
He had the boy under his arm and he was trying to pull the woman to her feet.
“We’ve got to run again. We’re too close to the road.”
The woman answered but he did not understand her. Again they were stumbling across the field.
He felt the pain in his side like a flash of color. The boy was in his arms, and again the woman
seemed to be dragging back, and trying to get her son from him. But the woman had no instinct for danger and he had to pull her down again. The boy had gone silent with shock. His mother wouldn’t stand. She wouldn’t move. He threw himself down into the furrow. The rippling thuds of machine-gun fire in the plowed earth and the engine roar flashed past them. A wounded soldier was screaming. Turner was on his feet. But the woman would not take his hand. She sat on the ground and hugged the boy tightly to her. She was
speaking Flemish to him, soothing him, surely telling him that everything was going to be all right.
The boy was staring at him blankly over his mother’s shoulder.
Turner took a step back. Then he ran. A bomb fell on the road, way over in the center of the village, where the lorries were. But one screech hid another, and it hit the field before he could go down. The blast lifted him forward several feet and drove him face-first into the soil. When he came to, his mouth and nose and ears were filled with dirt.

 Where the woman and her son had been was a crater. Even as he saw it, he thought he had always known. That was why he had to leave them. His business was to survive, though he had forgotten why. >>

For me, it is very sad moment. I was very sorry about them. Turner could not help them. It was dead end.

Cecilia worked a nurse and helped to people. Nothing special about her life was mentioned in this second part. She just wrote the letters for Robbie and her one phrase he remembered for always. Cecilia wrote: "I'll wait for you. Come back." Only her letters made him brave and strong.

So, what about the end? With all my heart I would like to read in the end that they will be happy together. They could live in a small house and could love each other forever. Although, I think, this is impossible. Because the life's already separated them, and may be they will never meet each other again. Of course, Turner can get to ship, which will take away all British soldiers, but he may not be there in time or smth else. 

I want to believe in their "forever together", but can't. 

When I will read all novel, I certainly tell you about the end. Will they be together or not.

new from part two

dissembling - притворство
...she was entering an arena of adult emotion and dissembling from which  her writing was bound to benefit.

swing out boldly - отважно метнуться
Briony swung out boldly from the house...

stable block - конюшня
Briony swung out boldly from the house in a wide arc that took her towards the stable block and the swimming pool.

a loping run - бежать вприпрыжку
She broke into a loping run across the grass...

way of conjuring - способ разоблачения
She must first protect her sister against him, and then find ways of conjuring him safely on paper.

shushing - шушукание
...no shushing from the shadows of the bamboo thickets.

a statement of fact - констатация факта
It was a statement of fact.

begin to shiver - начать дрожать

Despite the warmth of the night, Lola was beginning to shiver...

soot - гарь
...and everywhere, the smell of damp soot.

a toff - джентельмен
What's a private soldier like you doing talking like a toff?

copse - роща

As they came out of the copse they heard bombs...

hum - гул, шум
Ahead oh them was the hum of machinery.

greatcoat - шинель
Later, he got up from under his greatcoat, pulled on his boots...

snore - храп, сопение
Guided by their snores, he shuffled back to his bed.

to be sentence - быть осужденным
Cecilia had not spoken to her parents, brother or sister since November 1935 when Robbie was sentenced.

a bloody shamble - кровавая бойня
The retreat is a bloody shumbles.

bullet - пуля
'Bullet went clean through it,'he said as they came up.

tussle - стычка, борьба
He had revised their tussle with the vase by the fountain...

a corpse - труп
Before prison, before the war, before the sight of a corpse became a banality.

conviction - убеждение
This theory, or conviction, rested on the memory of a single encounter - the meeting at dusk on the bridge.

passage (intriguing moment)

IMHO, the most intriguing moment in the book is that exactly. It happened when all, who was on the dinner in the Tallin's house, were searching for twins (they run away, because they want to their home). That moment of Briony's "investigation" around the territory of house. 

<<So it should have been a simple matter, to pick her way down the bank and go across the grass
toward the temple. But again, she hesitated, and simply looked, without even calling out to the
twins. The building’s indistinct pallor shimmered in the dark. When she stared at it directly it
dissolved completely. It stood about a hundred feet away, and nearer, in the center of the grassy
stretch, there was a shrub she did not remember. Or rather, she remembered it being closer to the
shore. The trees were not right either, what she could see of them. The oak was too bulbous, the
elm too straggly, and in their strangeness they seemed in league. As she put her hand out to touch
the parapet of the bridge, a duck startled her with a high, unpleasant call, almost human in its
breathy downward note. It was the steepness of the bank, of course, which held her back, and the
idea of descent, and the fact that there was not much point. But she had made her decision. She
went down backward, steadying herself on clumps of grass, and at the bottom paused only to wipe
her hands on her dress.
She walked directly toward the temple, and had gone seven or eight steps, and was about to call
out the names of the twins, when the bush that lay directly in her path—the one she thought should
be closer to the shore—began to break up in front of her, or double itself, or waver, and then fork.
It was changing its shape in a complicated way, thinning at the base as a vertical column rose five
or six feet. She would have stopped immediately had she not still been so completely bound to the
notion that this was a bush, and that she was witnessing some trick of darkness and perspective.
Another second or two, another couple of steps, and she saw that this was not so. Then she
stopped. The vertical mass was a figure, a person who was now backing away from her and
beginning to fade into the darker background of the trees. The remaining darker patch on the
ground was also a person, changing shape again as it sat up and called her name.
“Briony?”>>

Finally, she found Lola, not twins. Lola was sexual assaulted by man, whose face could not be visible, because of the dark (it was night). But Briony's imagination and situations which she saw, for example in the library, make her thought that it was Robbie. She always repeated one phrase: "I CAN. AND I WILL". This phrase mean that she can blame Robbie, she saw him, and she absolutely sure in her guess.

So...I think, that Robbie loved Cecilia and he could not do this. I don't believe in it.

P.s. My book include three parts. The first one end, when Robbie was arrested and he was taken away by policeman in the car. 

read a review

I found a review on the book "Atonement", which I read.

This one:

"Ian McEwan’s NBCC award winning novel (which was also shortlisted for the 2001 Man Booker Prize) begins in England during a heatwave. Briony Tallis, a dramatic child obsessed with writing stories, prepares for the arrival of her Northern cousins – beautiful and manipulative Lola and her twin brothers – and her brother Leon. Briony’s older sister Cecilia meanwhile laments the long summer ahead of her and spars with the charwoman’s son Robbie. The initial chapters of Atonement move slowly, setting up the characters and establishing the sense of place. Set in the mid-1930s, the novel feels old-fashioned. Despite the slow pace, I enjoyed McEwan’s beautiful writing…and so once the plot and characters are fully established and things begin to unravel at the Tallis residence, my interest was quickly engaged.

                                                                                          pic. Ian McEwan

The structure of Atonement is unusual – spanning several decades, and written from multiple points of view in three distinct parts which take the reader from England to France during WWII. But, the structure is one of the things that works well for a novel which thematically examines the interpretation of truth. McEwan manages to keep his reader unsettled, wondering at the characters’ motivations and leaving loose ends. It is not until the final page is turned that the reader is able to verify the whole story.

I can understand why Atonement captured the attention of the judges for prizes like the NBCC and the Booker, as well as the scriptwriters. It is a fully realized, very literary effort by an author who understands how to string together words which inspire, intrigue and tug at the heartstrings. I am happy that I waded through the early parts of the novel when the going was methodical. The reader who sticks with McEwan as he sets up the story will be rewarded in the end."

And what is my opinion? Ok. 

First of all, I totally agree with the words "McEwan manages to keep his reader unsettled, wondering at the characters’ motivations and leaving loose ends. It is not until the final page is turned that the reader is able to verify the whole story." Yeah, that's really so. Until the last page you don't know HOW STILL THE NOVEL WILL END! Every page is bringing an absolutely new information, new story, and you cannot hang on one moment, you want to go on and go on. What new is waiting you on the next page? Oh, McEwan is master and I admire his style of writing.

Also, I was surprised, when I knew that this book was so wonderful, because of this McEwan was awarded for the Booker Prize. The book is worth to be read.

I will never forget the emotions, which the "Atonement" gave me.

-x.o.x.o.

information gap

I would like to speculate about information gaps.

Certainly, almost all information is presented in the text. Especially about clothes the characters are wearing. I love descriptions about Cecilia's readiness to evening's dinner, descriptions of her appearance.

<<On two occasions within half an hour, Cecilia stepped out of her bedroom, caught sight of herself
in the gilt-frame mirror at the top of the stairs and, immediately dissatisfied, returned to her
wardrobe to reconsider. Her first resort was a black crêpe de chine dress which, according to the
dressing table mirror, bestowed by means of clever cutting a certain severity of form. Its air of
invulnerability was heightened by the darkness of her eyes. Rather than offset the effect with a
string of pearls, she reached in a moment’s inspiration for a necklace of pure jet. The lipstick’s
bow had been perfect at first application. 
But the public gaze of the stairway mirror as she hurried toward it revealed a woman on her way to
a funeral, an austere, joyless woman moreover, whose black carapace had affinities with some
form of matchbox-dwelling insect. She did not linger—she turned on her heel, which was also black, and returned to her room.
...

She ran a hand along the few feet of personal history, her brief chronicle of taste. Her latest and
best piece, bought to celebrate the end of finals, before she knew about her miserable third, was the
figure-hugging dark green bias-cut backless evening gown with a halter neck. Too dressy to have
its first outing at home. She ran her hand further back and brought out a moiré silk dress with a
pleated bodice and scalloped hem—a safe choice since the pink was muted and musty enough for
evening wear. The triple mirror thought so too. She changed her shoes, swapped her jet for the
pearls, retouched her makeup, rearranged her hair, applied a little perfume to the base of her throat,
more of which was now exposed, and was back out in the corridor in less than fifteen minutes.

...

More in resignation than irritation or panic, she returned to her room.

She owned only one outfit that she genuinely liked, and that was the one she should wear. She let the pink dress fall on top of the black and, stepping contemptuously through the pile, reached for the gown, her green backless post-finals gown. As she pulled it on she approved of the firm caress of the bias cut through the silk of her petticoat, and she felt sleekly impregnable, slippery and secure; it was a mermaid who rose to meet her in her own full-length mirror. She left the pearls in place, changed
back into the black high-heeled shoes, once more retouched her hair and makeup, forwent another
dab of scent and then, as she opened the door, gave out a shriek of terror.>>

But it was only my favorite moment of Cecilia's behaviour, she was so excited before meeting Robbie.

So, continue... Also a lot of descriptions about the house, where family of Tallins were living. 

<<...but still she hesitated by the door, momentarily held by the perfection of
the scene—by the three faded Chesterfields grouped around the almost new Gothic fireplace in
which stood a display of wintry sedge, by the unplayed, untuned harpsichord and the unused
rosewood music stands, by the heavy velvet curtains, loosely restrained by an orange and blue
tasseled rope, framing a partial view of cloudless sky and the yellow and gray mottled terrace
where chamomile and feverfew grew between the paving cracks.>>

But there is not any information about the house from outside. I guess that it may be a big mansion with a big territory around it. I suggest that it can also be an ancient mansion which handed down from generation to generation. 

And the main gap that interested me is HOW OLD THE MAIN CHARACTERS? There isn't any mention about that. Of course, Briony is thirteen-year-old girl, but what about Robbie and Cecilia? I may say that they are about twenty-year-old, but I cannot be sure. 

So, may be that's all what I can say about information gaps in my book.

And again see you soon!

summary

Hello my dear readers!

To begin with, I want to tell you about the main characters of my book. I suppose that there are three person: Robbie Turner, Cecilia Tallins and her little sister Briony Tallins. 

The first thing that needs to be said is Atonement's main three of characters are Briony Tallis, a thirteen-year-old with with the abilities of the writer, her older sister Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of their family's cleaning lady. Robbie and Cecilia were studying together in Cambridge, and the Robbie's education was paid by Cecilia's father.

One oppressively hot summer day, Briony, annoyed by the attitudes of her cousins, who she is trying to involve in her latest play, looks out of a window and sees Robbie and Cecilia by the fountain in the grounds of the family's country house. Unknown to Briony, the pair are arguing over a vase they have broken, pieces of which have dropped into the fountain, but all that Briony sees is her sister stripping down to her underclothes to climb into the water. 

Following the fountain scene, Briony intercepts a letter from Robbie to Cecilia and reads it. In it, she discovers perverse desires and sets out to protect her sister from this sex-craved maniac. Before she can do so, she witnesses the couple making love and mistakes it for sexual assault. Briony blamed Robbie and after her proving he was arrested.  

The little girl, who didn't understand an adult life, broke the lives of two loving people by her silly child actions. She just have fantastic imagination, and, I suppose, exactly this help her to think that Robbie was a maniac.

There is a really interesting story, and most of all I like it because there is no way to guess what is going to be the next.

P.S. see you soon

new for me from part one

by plunging them - погружая их
She refreshed the flowers by plunging them into the fountain's basin...

the artificial lake - искусственное озеро
What remained was the artificial lake and island with its two stone bridges supporting the drive way...

slightly ajar windows - слегка приоткрытые окна
The vase she was looking for was on an American cherry-wood table by the French windows which were slightly ajar.

 calamity - провал, бедствие
...the project would end in calamity, with Briony expecting too much...

discomfited - быть смущенным
That was a mistake, of course, and she was discomfited and had no ides how to put him right.

opaque - неопределенный, трудный для понимания
a half smile that too opaque for the detection of irony.

blackmail - шантаж
What strange power did he have over her. Blackmail? Threats?

prone to nightmares - страдать ночными кошмарами
When she was small and prone to nightmares - those terrible screams in the nights - Cecilia used to go to her rooms and wake her.

unfathomably stupid - непроходимый дурак
...to be married to a man so nearly handsome, so hugely rich, so  unfathomably stupid.

the hingle of the day - обычная рутина
Bathtime, teatime, bedtime -  the hingle of the day...

a sorrier look - печальное зрелище
Closer to,  the temple had a sorrier look...

retribution - возмездие
...retribution was indifferent and granted no special favours to children.

a tepid bath - тёплая ванна
For over an hour after returning from work he lay in a tepid bath...

Pathetic hope! - жалкая надежда

arrogance - заносчивость
Even his arrogance need not to be display.

resignation - смирение
More in resignation than irritation or panic, she returned to her room.

guessing

Do you want to know what is the story in my book? I try to guess what the book might be about. 
On the cover of the book there is the beginning of the story, which I've already read. It is: 

"On the hottest days of  the summer of 1935, 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 the 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."

I read twelwe chapters and only could say that I absolutely don't understand what is going to be the next...
I realize how tragically the novel can end, but what will happened with the main characters falling in love with each other I can't imagine. Maybe they will be separated and will never meet? And how Robbie will be after these charges? (He was charged that he raped a child.) 

What is going to be? I really want to know what destiny is promised to all who was engaged in it.

finally I chose a book

Atonement

by Ian McEwan

For me, choosing a book wasn't a problem. Why? I'm going to say you about it. First time I really didn't know what I wanted to read. Two or three days I was going in different bookstores and could not understand WHAT I WANTED.
A few days later I and my classmates went to the library in our university and...

AND I SAW IT!!!

Grabbing this book, I was in seventh heaven. Because I found a novel that I really craved to read. 

Although  I watched the film which has the same title, but desire of reading wasn't miss. Of course, the film, where my lovely actress plays, deserves respect and praise. 
 

But in film you can't see all details. Honestly, I didn't understand it to the end. Because of this...

THE BOOK "ATONEMENT", 

WAIT FOR ME!