Recap of Atonement

I've just recently finished reading Atonement and cannot get over how much I love it. Yes, it does fall under the classic love novel category but it's so much more then a love story. The whole while I was reading it I couldn't help but feel the deep regret and remorse Briony felt her entire latter half life. The fact that her sisters life and the one man she ever truly loved was ruined because of her overpowers the reader and captivates them into a series of emotions. The ability Ian McEwen, the author, has to characterize each character in the story, the reader feels as if they are more than characters, but living breathing people. Even from the first sentence, "The play for which Briony had designed the posters, programs and tickets, constructed sales booth out of a folding screen tipped on its side, and lined the collected box in red crepe paper(1)..." Without even allowing Briony lines the audience can already tell what kind of people she is going to be. An overly tedious child who must have great talent because, at only age 11, she has written a play, made the tickets posters, and even a sales booth. It's novels like Atonement that really inspire me to try to write, or even try my hardest at anything. The fact that one person's mind has the ability to create not only a story but the characters inside of it with ridiculous believability just amazes me, and makes me hope that some day I could put this much effort into whatever career I have when I'm older.