Exactly how steamy is this story?
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There's one full-on steamy sex scene in Atonement. It takes place in the library, in case you'd somehow forgotten (1.11.64-1.11.68). There's also one X-rated note, written by Robbie, which he accidentally sends to Cecilia (1.8.15). We cannot reprint it here, since Shmoop is a family publication, but if you've done your homework, you probably know what we're referring to. It's, shall we say, memorable.
While this is about it for explicit content (except for a salty word here or there), it's not the only sex in the novel. On the contrary, the most important sex scene in the novel is arguably not the one between Robbie and Cecilia, but rather the one we don't see, in which Paul Marshall rapes Lola.
So why do we see Robbie and Cecilia and not Paul and Lola? Is it because Robbie and Cecilia's tryst is happy, whereas Paul and Lola's is violent and traumatic? That hardly seems likely. The novel doesn't shy away from lots of horrible unpleasantness. If we get to see Luc's exposed brains in the hospital, or the severed child's leg in the tree in France, it seems like the novel could have shown us Lola's assault, too, if it wanted to.
In the discussion of the vase and the fountain in our "Symbols" section, we talk about the way that, in Atonement, the symbols are less important than the stories that go with them. This seems to go for sex in the novel too. Robbie writes a note about the sex he wants to have with Cecilia before they have it. Then, afterwards, when he's taken away to prison, their one encounter becomes something they write about secretly to each other and remember. It's a symbol of, or a story about, their love. (See the discussion of books in the "Symbols" section, too.)
Paul and Lola, on the other hand, build their life around forgetting his assault. Lola marries him several years later, and they apparently tell no one. Briony knows that they will even sue to prevent her from publishing the facts during their lifetime. Sex for them is silence. And novels, or at least this novel, don't tell silences, only stories… or do they?