Second reading of Atonement

When you read Ian McEwan's 2001 novel, Atonement, the first time, you don't realize what the atonement in question is, and discovering it is a delightful literary experience [emphasis on literary]. But there's also delight in a second reading, for you can spot the many allusions in Part One to what you now know won't be revealed until Part Three.

    So as not to spoil a first reading for you, I'll say here only that the atonement in question has to do with the false testimony of a precocious thirteen-year-old girl (Briony Tallis, played by Saoirse Ronan, Romola Garai, and Vanessa Redgrave in the movie) against the lover (Robbie Turner, played by James McAvoy) of her older sister (Cecilia, played by Keira Knightley).
    Did I say "precocious"? Here's a striking example of Briony's precocity, brilliantly evoked by McEwan, who seemed as knowledgeable in 2002 of the illusion of free will as Sam Harris seems to have become only a decade later:

[Briony] raised one hand and flexed its fingers and wondered, as she had sometimes before, how this thing, this machine for gripping, this fleshy spider on the end of her arm, came to be hers, entirely at her command. Or did it have some little life of its own? She bent her finger and straightened it. The mystery was in the instant before it moved, the dividing moment between not moving and moving, when her intention took effect. It was like a wave breaking. If she could only find herself at the crest, she thought, she might find the secret of herself, that part of herself that was really in charge....
    ...A second thought always followed the first, one mystery bred another: Was everyone else really as alive as she was? For example did her sister...also have a real self concealed behind a breaking wave, and did she spend time thinking about it, with a finger held up to her face?...If the answer was yes, then the world, the social world, was unbearably complicated, with two billion voices, and everyone's thoughts striving in equal importance and everyone's claim on life as intense, and everyone thinking they were unique, when no one was. One could drown in irrelevance. But if the answer was no, then Briony was surrounded by machines, intelligent and pleasant enough on the outside, but lacking the bright and private inside feeling she had.... [Atonement: A Novel, by Ian McEwan, 2001, pp. 33-34]