York Notes for A Level: Atonement includes features to help you achieve top grades, including extract analysis of key passages, to add extra in-depth information and also to demonstrate how to approach detailed analysis, a key skill in your exam. Students who can demonstrate this depth of understanding, linking out to contexts and critical interpretations, in their exam responses to Atonement questions are likely to achieve a higher grade than those who comment on the novel in general terms. You might be asked, for example, to discuss ways in which McEwan presents Lola throughout the novel, to discuss how social class and the language and behaviour of police officers is portrayed in the novel and explore the various literary and linguistic devices that McEwan uses and their effects.