Atonement by Ian McEwan

I just started reading this book today and it's beginning surprised me. It was original and different in a way that really made regard what I was reading with new eyes. The different perspectives that the author shows is in some ways nascent in form from what I usually read. The way Briony Tallis regards the art of story telling and how she interprets life caused me to question my own writing and its real purpose. 

Here is a quote that really set my mind thinking: "She need only show separate minds, as alive as her own, struggling with the idea that other minds were equally alive. It wasn't only wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding; above all, it was failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you."

This concept of the human struggle being aptly described by a fictional thirteen year old baffled me. Here I am twenty-one and I don't even think about these types of things.  Where has the inquisitive young minds apt to learn about the human condition gone? Have we truly devolved to such a state that we don't even think about what drives our actions, stories, believes, even our lives?