Coming of Age as a Writer

Briony Tallis was a very odd little girl and was very different from the rest of her family.

 “The Tallises began to understand that the baby of the family possessed a strange mind and a facility with words." 

Just like Florence Nightingale and her sister Parthenope who were complete opposites, the same was true for Briony and her sister Cecilia. 

“She was one of those children possessed by a desire to have the world just so. Whereas her big sister’s room was a stew of unclosed books, unfolded cloths, unmade bed, un-emptied ashtrays, Briony’s was a shrine to her controlling demon."

 

But as Briony came of age as a writer, like the great and everlasting pieces of literature within the British Library, she knew that her final novel’s purpose was to exist and preserve her imagination far after she had passed away. 

“When I am dead, and the Marshalls are dead, and the novel is finally published, we will only exist as my inventions. Briony will be as much of a fantasy as the lovers who shared a bed in Balham and enraged their landlady."

Briony desperately wanted to change what she had done to Cecilia and childhood friend Robbie.

“She longed to have someone else’s past, to be someone else, like hearty Fiona with her unstained life stretching ahead, and her affectionate, sprawling family.”

Briony deeply cared for Robbie who was fighting in the war despite the fact that it was her actions that got him there in the first place.  

“She thought too how one of these men might be Robbie, who she would dress his wounds without knowing who he was, and with cotton wool tenderly rub his face until his familiar features emerged, and how he would turn to her with gratitude, realize who she was, and taker her hand, and in silently squeezing it, forgive her.”