Ian McEwan's novel, Atonement, was hailed as
a masterpiece all over the world. Saturday shares
its confident, graceful prose and its remarkable
perceptiveness, but is perhaps even more dramatically
compelling, showing how life can change in an
instant, for better or for worse. It is the work of
a writer at the very height of his powers.
On the hottest day of the summer of 1934, 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 that 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.