1999

1999 is the year in which the novel's concluding section, "London, 1999," is set. It is the narrative present from which the elderly Briony Tallis, now a seventy-seven-year-old novelist, looks back on the events of 1935 and 1940, and completes the final draft of the book that constitutes her lifelong attempt at atonement. The year marks the culmination of a fifty-nine-year writing project, the moment when Briony, facing her own mortality, makes her final authorial decisions about the fates of the characters she has created.

Briony's Final Reckoning

On the morning of her seventy-seventh birthday, Briony visits the Imperial War Museum library in Lambeth to donate letters and make final corrections to her manuscript. She has just received a diagnosis of vascular dementia from her doctor, who tells her that her brain is "closing down" and that she will progressively lose memory, language, and eventually all motor control. Rather than despair, she experiences a strange elation and spends the day on the phone breaking the news to her closest friends. The diagnosis gives her a new urgency: she knows she has limited time to complete her work.

The Encounter with the Marshalls

Outside the museum, Briony has a chance encounter with her cousin Lola Quincey and her husband Paul Marshall, now Lord and Lady Marshall, who are leaving after a meeting about a grant from their foundation. Briony observes them closely: Paul Marshall, at eighty-eight, is frail and uses a walking stick, while Lola, nearly eighty, remains "lean and fit as a racing dog," wearing a sable coat and high heels. The sight of them, still vigorous and protected by wealth, confirms Briony's long-held understanding that she cannot publish her truthful account while they are alive. The Marshalls have a history of aggressive libel actions, and Lola would never tolerate an accusation of criminal conspiracy.

The Birthday Performance

Briony travels to Tilney's Hotel, the converted Tallis family home, for a birthday celebration organized by Charles, Pierrot's grandson. The house has been transformed: the lake is gone, replaced by a golf course, and the island temple has been removed. In the old library, now stripped of its books, the children perform a revival of Briony's childhood play, "The Trials of Arabella," which she had written for her brother Leon's homecoming in 1935. The performance, sixty-four years late, moves the elderly Pierrot to tears. Briony makes a speech acknowledging that the original rehearsals fell apart because she had decided to become a novelist.

The Final Draft and the Question of Atonement

Alone in her room at five in the morning, Briony reflects on the fifty-nine-year evolution of her manuscript. She reveals that in all earlier drafts, the ending was "pitiless": Robbie Turner died of septicemia at Bray Dunes on 1 June 1940, and Cecilia Tallis was killed by the bomb that destroyed Balham Underground station in September of the same year. Only in this final version does she allow the lovers to survive and be reunited. She acknowledges this as a deliberate act of authorial grace, a "final act of kindness, a stand against oblivion and despair." She concludes that true atonement is impossible for a novelist who holds absolute power over her characters: "No atonement for God, or novelists, even if they are atheists. It was always an impossible task, and that was precisely the point. The attempt was all."