Was Briony mistaken, mendacious or over-imaginative?
A. I’m always defending Briony. None of us would want to be judged by how we were at the age of 13. The important thing about her is that the novel is about the growth of a moral conscience. Initially, she sticks to her story, even though she has her doubts, but by the time she’s in her teens, she’s beginning to feel real anguish. The beginning of her atonement is her decision not to go to Cambridge and to follow her older sister into nursing instead. When she receives Cyril Connolly’s letter criticising her story it’s another important staging post in her moral growth. When he says, ‘What you need is the backbone of a narrative,’ she realises that what she actually needs is backbone herself, and what she needs to do is write about her own role in relation to the lovers at the fountain. So that’s the beginning of a lifetime of remorse for her. Q.Given their role in what happened, why is there no comeuppance for Lola and Paul Marshall? A. They are the two real villains, but sometimes th
