atonement ...

i recently finished Atonement by Ian McEwan. It was a wonderful read, my favourite of McEwan's thus far, and i would suggest it to anyone who enjoys delving into the minds and hearts of a novel's characters ...

"... how can a novelist achieve atonement when, with her absolute power of deciding outcomes, she is also god? There is no one, no entity or higher form that she can appeal to, or be reconciled with, or that can forgive her. There is nothing outside her. In her imagination she has set the limits and the terms. No atonement for god, or novelists, even if they are atheists. It was always an impossible task, and that was precisely the point. The atempt was all."