Ian McEwan: 'Atonement' Trivia Quiz

Answer: Briony, Cecilia, Robbie, Emily

If you remember, we get the voices of all of these characters in part one of the novel. Part two is told from Robbie's perspective alone, and the final part from Briony's.

Answer: Thirteen

She is ten when Robbie takes her swimming in the river; Lola is fifteen at the beginning of the book; Briony is eighteen when we begin to follow her nursing career.

Answer: True

They are still married, although their father is 'hiding' among his books at Oxford, and their mother is in Paris with her lover, 'who works in the wireless'. The children cannot bear the thought that their parents will probably divorce.

Answer: The Trials of Arabella

She writes the play at the age of thirteen, but it is not performed until her 77th birthday - right at the end of the novel. It is a very touching moment.

Answer: Paul Marshall

Lola marries her rapist five years later, putting paid to Briony's hopes of finally acccusing him - Lola would be sure to cover for him. This has the implication that she will never be forgiven by Robbie, as she would not have been able to clear his name.

Answer: Dunkirk

The 'strategic withdrawal' to the chaos of the beaches at Dunkirk is considered as one of history's greatest failures - at least, it is in Britain. Although the Allied armies were completely surrounded and isolated on the coast of northern France with the German army pressing in on all sides, they still managed to evacuate their entire expeditionary force across the Channel to safety.

Much of the success of this narrow escape is due to private boat owners and fishermen from the south coast of England who risked their lives(and often lost them) by sailing across to Dunkirk and picking up soldiers from the beaches.

It was also due to efficient command on the part of the Allies, and the inexplicable fact that just when victory was in sight, the Germans paused instead of annihilating their enemy.

The dramatic retreat is seen through the eyes of Robbie, who is serving as a private (his prison history prevented him enlisting as an officer).

Answer: Belgian

This bit comes during the slow retreat - as the plane flies in, Robbie tries to force the mother to run for cover, and picks up her child to help her. However, they are in shock and reluctant to go with him. They are hit by one of the Stuka's thousand-pound bombs.

He hears her speaking Flemish to her son, and mention is made of the collapse of the Belgian defence - this is how we know they are Belgian.

Answer: False

Leon and Cecilia go to Cambridge, but although Briony is offered a place at her sister's college, she turns in down in favour of a career in nursing. As the place would have meant so much to Briony as an aspiring author, Cecilia assumes in one of her letters to Robbie that it is part of her atonement for the lie she told so many years before.

Answer: Tilney's Hotel

When she returns to the house in the final section of the novel (set in 1999), the artificial lake and stuccoed temple are both gone, along with the ivy on the house itself. These are the most obvious outward changes, and the reader is as struck by them as Briony is - like her, this is the first time we have seen the house since 1935.

Answer: False

This is all a figment of Briony's imagination. She has in fact written this ending for her novel - we discover that the entire book that we have been reading is supposed to be this work. Although the scene is described in great detail and we do not suppose it to have been otherwise than the truth, Briony confesses in the last few pages that she made it up.

She notes that Robbie died of septicaemia on 1st June 1940, and Cecilia was killed later that year when a tube station was bombed. It is the best amends she can make for the dead lovers, whose affair was never consummated.

However, their deaths meant that there was no chance of forgiveness for Briony. She lived her life without ever really being able to atone for putting Robbie in prison (and thus effectively sendind him to his death), and to give them a happy ending is the least she can do.