Atonement by Ian McEwan

There were so many ways Ian McEwan’s novel Atonement might have gone wrong. If book critics were like Olympic diving judges and factored in “degree of difficulty,” they would treat McEwan’s story line as if it were a back-flying two-and-a-half somersault. If this were NASCAR, fans would be waiting for the first big crash.

How do you get all this stuff to…