Atonement, by Ian McEwan | Episode 61

How can letters misrepresent the sender or receiver?

To what extent should letters remain private?

Why are letters often at the middle of mysteries and detective stories?

Today’s podcast is part of a series on the conceptual topic of letter writing. You can also listen to the podcast via Apple or Spotify or in the Substack app. A full AI-generated transcript can be accessed on the desktop version.

Over these eight weeks, I’ve brought you texts related to this topic. This series is an experiment for a new podcast season that I recorded to sync up with the holiday letter season and the epistolary form of my latest novel. Stay tuned for more fiction, word sketches, and cultural essays coming very soon.

I’d love to hear what you think in the comments. Feel free to ask questions or share text ideas, even your own writing. Thank you!

Excerpt from Atonement, by Ian McEwan (2001, UK, pp. 78-9):

‘How dare you! How dare you all!’

Leon stood too and made a calming gesture with his palms. ‘Cee…’

When she made a lunge to snatch the letter from her mother, she found not only her brother but the two policemen in her way. Marshall was standing too, but not interfering.

‘It belongs to me,’ she shouted. ‘You have absolutely no right!’

Emily did not even look up from her reading, and she gave herself time to read the letter several times over. when she was done she met her daughter’s fury with her own colder version.

‘If you had done the right thing, young lady, with all your education, and come to me with this, then something could have been done in time and your cousin would have been spared her nightmare.’

For a moment Cecilia stood alone in the centre of the room, fluttering the fingers of her right hand, staring at them each in turn, unable to believe her association with such people, unable to begin to tell them what she knew.

Intertextual reading with “The Purloined Letter” (Edgar Allan Poe) — “Purloined Letters in Ian McEwan’s Atonement”:

Critics have noticed that Atonement refers to a specific intertext, namely, E.A. Poe's "The Purloined Letter."1 They also perceive its use of motifs familiar from classical detective stories. The Tallis estate is the scene of a crime in which the detective looks for the criminal among a closed circle of suspects. In the first part of the novel there are suggestions that a crime will be committed, placing readers in the position of armchair detectives by inviting them to wonder what crime will be committed and by whom. Briony assumes the role of detective, although she concedes that she is among the transgressors (156). Readers learn early on of Briony's wrongdoing but the epilogue has a surprise in store, just as does the ending of a detective story. The thirteen-year-old Briony, who is an aspiring writer, understands the detective's role as dealing with the secrets of the human heart (40). She pictures herself as a detective of humanity. She is piqued about the problem of other minds: what can one know about another person's consciousness? How can one imagine someone else's mind given the limitations of one's own mind (36-37)? Briony's understanding of the detective's method reinforces the links Atonement shares with "The Purloined Letter," for the ability to imagine the workings of another mind is essential for Poe's C. A