Ian McEwan is an acclaimed English novelist known for works like Atonement. The document summarizes characters and plots from McEwan's novel Atonement. It describes the Tallis family in 1930s England and how the young Briony falsely accuses the family's servant Robbie of raping her cousin Lola, sending him to prison. Both Robbie and Briony experience the consequences of her mistake over the coming decades, including during World War II.

3. Ian Russell McEwan
• English novelist and screenwriter
• The Times featured him on their list of "The 50
greatest British writers since 1945".
• Major works: Enduring Love , Sweet Tooth,
The Children Act, Amsterdam, The Cement
Garden, Atonement, The Comfort of Strangers.
• He won the Man Booker Prize for Amsterdam
(1998).

4. Characters
Briony Tallis
The Younger sister of Leon
and Cecilia Tallis. Briony is
an aspiring writer.
Briony is part narrator,
part character and we see
her transformation from
child to women as the novel
progresses.

5. Cecilia Tallis
The middle child in the
Tallis family, Cecilia
fallen in love with her
childhood companion
Robbie Turner.
When Robbie is falsely
accused of rape shortly after,
Cecilia loses her love to jail and war, and chooses
not to contact any members of her family.

6. Leon Tallis
The eldest child in the Tallis
family,Leon return home to visit.
He brings his friend Paul Marshall
along with him on his trip home .

7. Emily Tallis
oEmily is the mother of Briony , Leon, and Cecilia.
Emily is ill in bed.

8. Robbie Turner
Robbie is the son of Grace Turne
who lives on the grounds of Tallis
family.
Having grown up with Leon, Brio
Cecilia, he knows the family well.
Robbie is sent to jail when Briony falsely accuses him
of raping Lola.

9. Grace Turner
•The mother of Robbie
Turner, she was given
permission from Jack Tallis
to live on the ground.
•When her son is falsely
accused of raping Lola,
only she and Cecilia believe
he is innocent, and Grace
chooses to leave the Tallis
family.

10. Lola Quincey
•A 15-year-old girl who
is Briony, Cecilia, and
Leon's cousin. She
comes, along with her
twin brothers, to stay
with the Tallises
after her parents' divorce.
•She is also subject to rape while staying at the Tallis
household. Lola appears later in the novel as a
mature woman, married to Paul Marshall

11. Paul Marshall
A friend of Leon. He allegedly rapes Lola outside
the Tallis household after dark ;Briony however,
accuses Robbie of Lola's rape, and many years later
Lola and Paul marry.

12. Jackson & Pierrot Quincey
Lola’s younger twin brothers
and Briony,Cecilia,
and Leon's cousin. They come,
along with their sister,
to stay with the Tallises after
their parents' divorce.

13. Jack Tallis- Jack is the father of Briony, Cecilia,
and Leon. Jack often works late nights and it is
alluded to in the novel that he is having an
affair.
Corporal Nettle & Corporal Mace- Robbie’s
Two companions during the Dunkirk evacuation.

14. Plot Summary
• Part One
Briony Tallis, a 13-year-old English girl with a
talent for writing, lives at her family's country
estate with her parents. Her older sister
Cecilia attends the University of Cambridge
with Robbie Turner, the son of the Tallis family
housekeeper and a childhood friend of Cecilia.

15. .
In the summer of 1935, Briony's cousins, Lola
and twins Jackson and Pierrot, visit the family.
Briony witnesses a moment of sexual tension
between Cecilia and Robbie from afar.
Briony misconstrues the situation and concludes
that Robbie is acting aggressively toward Cecilia.
Robbie, meanwhile, realises he is attracted to Cecilia,
whom he has not seen in some time, and writes
several drafts of a love letter to her, giving a copy to
Briony to deliver.

16.  Later on at a family dinner party, attended by Briony's
brother Leon and his friend Paul Marshall, it is discovered
that the twins have run away and the dinner party breaks
into teams to search for them.
 In the darkness, Briony discovers her cousin Lola,
apparently being raped by an assailant she cannot
clearly see. Lola is unable or unwilling to identify
the attacker, but Briony decides to accuse Robbie
and identifies him to the police as the rapist,
claiming she has seen Robbie's face in the dark.
Robbie is taken away to prison, with only Cecilia
and his mother believing his protestations of
innocence.

17. Part two
 By the time that World War II has started, Robbie has
spent several years in prison. He is then released on the
condition of enlistment in the army to fight in the war.
Cecilia has trained and become a nurse.
 She has cut off all contact with her family because
of the part they took in sending Robbie to jail. Robbie and
Cecilia have only been in contact by letter, since she was
not allowed to visit him in prison. Before Robbie has to go
to war in France, they meet once for half an hour during
Cecilia's lunch break.
 At the end of part two, Robbie falls asleep in
Dunkirk, one day before the evacuation.

18. Briony realised the full extent of her mistake, and
decides it was Paul Marshall, Leon's friend, whom she saw
raping Lola. Briony still writes, although she does not
pursue it with the same recklessness as she did as a child.
Briony attends the wedding of her cousin Lola and Paul
Marshall before finally visiting Cecilia. Briony meets Robbie
unexpectedly at her sister's. They both refuse to forgive
Briony, who nonetheless tells them she will try and put
things right.
Part Three

19. She promises to begin the legal procedures needed to
exonerate Robbie, even though Paul Marshall will
never be held responsible for his crime because of his
marriage to Lola, the victim.

20. Last part
oThe fourth section, titled "London 1999", is written
from Briony's perspective. She is a successful novelist
at the age of 77 and dying of vascular dementia.
It is revealed that Briony is the author of the
preceding sections of the novel. Although Cecilia and
Robbie are reunited in Briony's novel, they were not
in reality.
oIt is suggested that Robbie Turner may have died of
septicaemia - caused by his injury - on the beaches of
Dunkirk, and Cecilia may have been killed by the
bomb that destroyed the gas and water mains above
Balham Underground station.

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