Atonement

In 1935, Briony Tallis is a 13-year-old girl who lives with her wealthy family on a large estate in England. She dreams of being a writer and when her older brother Leon returns to visit the family, she writes a play to be performed in Leon’s honor. Her mother, Emily, praises The Trials of Arabella as “stupendous” (10), and Briony hopes that Leon will be impressed. Briony is a precocious girl who is disappointed because she has “no secrets” (11) of her own; she writes to spend time in the “unruly world” (12) of her own invention where she can create lives that are as complicated as the one she wishes she lived. She enlists her cousins Lola, Jackson, and Pierrot to perform the play. Lola is 15 and Jackson and Pierrot are nine-year-old twins; they are staying with the Tallis family while their parents finalize a bitter divorce. Briony tries to organize rehearsals with her cousins, but she is annoyed because her “ginger-haired and freckled” (13) cousins do not match her characters’ descriptions. The twins are reluctant to learn their lines and—though Lola is enthusiastic—because Briony is frustrated and overbearing. When Briony reluctantly agrees to allow Lola to play the main role, she imagines Lola receiving the praise that Briony desires.