Word: dunkirk
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...horror intrude into memories of glory. Novelists can capture the mixed emotions that go with war better than historians. It's no accident that Ian McEwan's Atonement--perhaps the most admired British novel of the past decade--has at its center the retreat of British forces to Dunkirk, a story that mixes courage, fear and incompetence in equal measures...
...during the six years of World War II. On May 10, 1940, the British put a controversial hawk named Winston Churchill in power. The new Prime Minister's first bold decision was to order a retreat, organizing the nine-day evacuation of 340,000 British and French troops at Dunkirk that began on May 27. He then rallied his country, vowing England would never surrender...
After the Battle of Dunkirk, though, he was interned as an enemy alien and shipped to Australia...
...traffic in the vicinity? And how could the captain of the Vicky have missed the wave upon wave of media attention that has broken over the Tricolor in the past month? First, she was hit by the freighter Kariba on Dec. 14, and keeled over in shallow water off Dunkirk. Two days later, the wreck was hit by another ship, the Nicola. That raised fears not enough had been done to prevent further collisions in the world's busiest shipping lane: hence the buoys and the coastguard signals. But the precautions were wasted on the Vicky, which even ignored...
...midpoint the novel moves forward five years to the ragged British retreat from Dunkirk, in which Robbie is a weary infantryman, then to London, where Briony, now a nurse trainee, is struggling to find some remedy for the damage she has done. Her solution is not plain until the surprising final pages, when you grasp that if storytelling can be an occasion for sin, it can also be an act of contrition. It's McEwan's subtle game to show fiction working its worst kind of curse, then leading us unawares to give it our blessing...