Abstract
<jats:p>The study aims to identify the role of spatio-temporal context as an active subject of the narrative that shapes the social roles of characters in Ian McEwan’s “Atonement” (2001) and Jonathan Franzen’s “Crossroads” (2021). The article compares two types of family space: a closed estate in pre-war England and an open suburban home in the USA during the period of post-countercultural crisis. The analysis utilizes the concept of the chronotope (M. M. Bakhtin, Yu. M. Lotman), the phenomenological approach (G. Bachelard), and concepts of family spatial practices (copresence, affective and ambivalent spaces). The scientific originality lies in the fact that, for the first time in a comparative context, the study not only identifies types of connection between social status and geography (deterministic in McEwan and mediated in Franzen) but also applies the framework of spatial practices to analyze the library as an ambivalent locus and the suburban home as a space of illusory well-being. The results of the research show that in “Atonement”, the verticality of the estate predetermines the social vulnerability of the protagonist, whereas in “Crossroads”, the horizontality of the suburb creates conditions for the public unfolding of family contradictions. In both texts, the spatial organization of the house acts as a participant in the drama, shaping the moral choices and the boundaries of the possible for the characters.</jats:p>