Sob Fest

I finished Atonement (the book, not the movie) last night as I watched the final basketball games of the day. And the ending, though I expected the twist and knew something was coming, made me sob. Loudly. The dog stared.

This morning, my eyes are swollen, and I’m a bit stopped up. The plot didn’t end as I wanted it to, but I can still appreciate the story. Ian McEwan’s prose is sometimes overwhelmingly beautiful, sometimes a bit too much. I can appreciate the construct he sets up of the characters and the reader being manipulated by the narrator/writer/fiction itself. I didn’t even like the characters that much, but at the end, I cried for them, the things they’d lost, what I wanted for them. . . .and they weren’t even real.

I really am a tenderheart, I guess.