If only to faun

It's taken me an awfully long time to build up to watching Atonement, and for very good reason: the book is my all-time favourite novel and I was concerned they might bork it. Also I'm not especially keen on Kiera Underbitely and didn't want to change the Cecilia in my head to match her emaciated frame.

Having recently suffered from a burgeoning crush on James McAvoy, however, I couldn't resist it any longer. What better place to watch his beautiful emotes than in the most romantic tale I know? It's something of a step up from the until-now top secret fact that both Lorna and I found him highly attractive as a faun in Narnia. We must never speak of this again.

It wasn't the disaster I thought it was going to be, they didn't smack the book around and stick it in a shredder, so I can't complain too much. But a movie was never going to capture the strength of the novel - that ending was like a punch in the face, it shocked me completely and I actually burst into tears on the bus to work. It stayed with me for weeks, no other book has ever so profoundly affected my mood.

(Except possibly LOTR, which I had to give to my mum to look after when I got to the bit with Shelob because I was very small and very distressed.)

I wasn't sure they would be able to pull that off and I was right: it's a good movie, Mr McAvoy is delicious and Underbitely doesn't drive me as far up the wall as she usually does. But it wasn't my Atonement, because that story is a league apart.