Atonement (novel) Atonement (novel) Atonement is a 2001 British metafiction novel written by Ian McEwan concerning the understanding of and responding to the need for personal atonement. Set in three time periods, 1935 England, Second World War England and France, and present-day England, it covers an upper-class girl's half-innocent mistake that ruins lives, her adulthood in the shadow of that mistake, and a reflection on the nature of writing. Widely regarded as one of McEwan's best works, it was shortlisted for the 2001 Booker Prize for fiction. In 2010, "TIME" magazine named "Atonement" in its list of the 100 greatest English-language novels
Atonement in Christianity constrain My soul to love its God again, Its God to glorify; And lo! I come thy cross to share, Echo thy sacrificial prayer, And with my Saviour die."</poem> The Christian believer, in Methodist theology, mystically draws himself/herself into the scene of the crucifixion in order to experience the power of salvation that it possesses. In the Eucharist, the Methodist especially experiences the participatory nature of substitutionary atonement as "the sacrament sets before our eyes Christ's death and suffering whereby we are transported into an experience of the crucifixion." According to the doctrine of The New Church, as explained by