Literary inspiration

[Paul Mackin]

Anybody read Ian McEwan's recent (just out in U.S.) _Atonement_?  I just did 
and was curious if any p-listers might have liked it.  On one level I have to 
say the book is quite a downer. It deals with a) an innocent man being sent 
to prison because of the lie of one of the novel's principal characters--a 
13-year old girl at the time, b) a disastrous WW II retreat (Dunkirk), and c) 
grisly life in a wartime London military hospital.  But the book is also 
about fiction writing. Fiction writing from what I would be inclined to call 
an economics perspective. The COST--there ain't no free lunch--of literary 
creation both to the creator himself (HERself in this particular case) and 
the real people from whom she needs to draw inspiration.

_Amsterdam_ is also lying here to be read.


P.