Ian McEwan is a prolific writer. His early novel The Cement Garden also makes use of children's perspectives; Amsterdam explores the impact of a protagonist's choices on the lives of others. His other books include Enduring Love, Saturday, Black Dogs, and Sweet Tooth.
McEwan uses an epigraph from Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey to begin his novel, and has spoken in interviews of the stylistic relationship between Austen's novels and Part One of Atonement.
In Part Three, Briony refers frequently to the influence of modernist British author Virginia Woolf, particularly her novel The Waves; see also Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse.
Instructors may wish to refer students to...
