An extreme rarity. McEwan's skillful prose captures vivid images with a lyricism that evokes moods of early 20th Century England with vibrant tone and color, from its sunny summer innocence of 1935 to its gritty pre-US-intervention war episodes. But the plot isn't elusive, like Ondaatje's "The English Patient" or Cunningham's "The Hours." We follow the story from beginning to end with clarity, mounting our engagement in his characters with each passing chapter until its final devastating pages. I noticed one element missing in the plot that would connect Robbie Turner's imprisonment and how that led him to the front lines-- McEwan does not hone in on causation between crime and consequence. Still, Briony Tallis is a character unlike any I've encountered in recent years, and her haunting deist/subjugate characterization in the last two acts are both startlingly original and masterfully executed.

The real magic here is McEwan's language. It's a book where one can open any page and read ALOUD a section just to appreciate its sound.

I did enjoy the film, its lyricism, and its visual appeal, which gives credence to Joe Wright's storytelling abilities in the absence of McEwan's language. However, it lacked two major elements of the plot I felt were so crucial in the book. First, the film does not spend much time depicting Robbie on the road to Dunkirk, where through him we experience many horrors of war, including a harrowing episode with a Belgian woman and her son. Second, the film sums up the final act into a television interview, virtually skipping over the book's poignant return of elderly Briony to her childhood home now converted into a hotel, evoking a wonderful circular sentiment as she watches a production of "The Trials of Arabella" that, had it been performed in 1935, may have prevented her crime. Didn't the filmmakers consider the power of haunting memory in "The Remains of the Day"?

Nonetheless, this is one of the best books written in the last twenty years, and for many reasons. It's not just a literary book. And it's not too high-brow to elude commercial readers. It's both an homage to Jane Austen period pieces and a benchmark for metafiction and psychological realism as seen in contemporary literature like "The Time Traveler's Wife." Really a great experience for readers of all tastes.