An “Atonement” for the author

My first impression of one of the most praised Ian McEwan’s books - “Atonement”- was not very positive. But as time passed and I thought a little more of the story and the idea I came to the conclusion that after all the book is not that cliché. What I found intriguing was the idea of the authorship seen through the states of maturing. What I mean is that the process of writing is linked with the process of growing. In other words, the unstable carried away lost in fantasies young Briony and her fairy-tale-like writing concerned with twisting and reinventing the reality changes through the years in a sensitive, profound, searching answers and atonement writing.

Childhood. Children are popular for their inexhaustible imagination. They tend to transform reality in order to expand the limitations of it. Similarly, the “young” writing is bold and determined, persuasive and often insisting on its own position as the only possible. And as much as “young” writing wants to transform genres, notions, history, literature or reality, it is as much far-fetched and blinded for its own demerits.
Adolescence. This state of both writing and maturing is marked with the initiation into sexual recognition, desires and identification. The taboos of sex are explored and unsealed. The process is not easy and cause doubt and shadows over the perfect imagined world of the ex-child. Sex is a disturbing topic and usually misinterpreted. Briony half-imagines and half-experiences her attraction to Robbie, only to unconsciously avenge his love for her sister by accusing him of being a rapist, causing great tragedy and catastrophe in several lives.
Adulthood. And this is how the story enters the mode of searching - the enormously difficult task of finding the words to formulate the reasons and the right questions; to be insightful enough to see your own faults and mistakes. The quest of writing is extremely hard and acquires painful honesty and sincerity.
As an author Briony searches a truth that is unattainable, but she manages to restore a life for her sister and Robbie, rewriting the story of their lives in her own terms. She escapes reality but yet constructs another one in order to do late justice and to achieve atonement for her mistakes. The author becomes a creator, a demiurge. The whole story from the beginning to the end is Briony’s literary attempt to undo her injustice, to alter reality into linguistic concept where death and war cannot finish the story. And this is her act of seeking atonement.
But is an author bound to achieve it?

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ralica_Luckanova