Human Croquet

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MY THOUGHTS: It took me some time to become engaged in his book - purely a reflection of me and my state of mind, not Kate Atkinson's writing, I have come to realise. All the world and time is Atkinson’s stage, and this is certainly an ambitious and clever novel that offers alternative readings of not only scenes, but characters’ interpretations of events. What the reader accepts is up to her or him, but nothing is predictable. Nellie Coker is at the forefront of the story. She isa cut-throat nightclub owner recently released from prison who finds her hands full battling with her 6 duplicitous children, a librarian, a detective, and two missing teenage girls.

It's as if the writer is having so much fun recalling her own time as an English student, satirising her would-be-radical classmates and dysfunctional lecturers, that she loses sight of the fact that this territory has been thoroughly covered by other novelists. (It's like a post-modernist take on David Lodge.) Despite her inventiveness there's something stereotypical about many of the (large) cast of characters. I couldn't work out whether the author was being lazy, or had just got carried away. Tags: Elizabethan times, Human Croquet, Kate Atkinson, literary fiction, magic realism, mystery, war-time England I loved the setting, as Atkinson captures the feeling of 1920s London. From the gritty streets to the posh clubs to the dirty underbelly of the elite, I was transported. In addition, there are drugs, mob wars, the sex trade, the chase of fame and fortune, and murder to contend with. croquet, that's a wonderful game -- of course we need more people for that,'' says Mrs. Baxter wistfully. The game is never played in the course of the story. But that doesn't mean that everyone hasn't been followingAnother aspect of the book that I particularly enjoyed is the way that Atkinson plays around with motifs from fairy tales (Cinderella and Hansel and Gretel spring to mind immediately as examples). She gives the well-known stories subtle nods without ever explicitly copying them, in a way that suggests that all is not quite as it seems. I found it simultaneously reassuringly familiar as I recognised elements of particular stories and unbalancing as what I knew of those stories indicated that things were not going to go as I expected, which is really how the whole novel works: fundamentally a story about family relationships, it is quite happy to have characters turning into dogs or time travelling without any indication that this is somehow unusual. In Soho, London, Nellie Coker is queen of all she surveys - successful owner of a string of nightclubs, she’s a ruthless character - knows what she wants, and also gets what she wants! She’s extremely shrewd, has a good business head, and is determined and ambitious enough to want the best education that money can buy for her six children - her nightclubs provide the means for those ambitions. In a country still recovering from the Great War, London is the focus for a delirious nightlife. In Soho clubs, peers of the realm rub shoulders with starlets, foreign dignitaries with gangsters, and girls sell dances for a shilling a time.

Shrines of Gaiety" definitely has all the usual hallmarks of a Kate Atkinson novel, and as mentioned above, her writing style, vocabulary, imagination and attention to detail is superb as usual. But the plot itself is too slow to develop, and the characters themselves are bland and non-engaging and underdeveloped, and these factors definitely hurt the novel. Well, there isn't one really. Effie is writing this comic story based on her life and reading parts of it to her mother Nora, who lives on a bleak remote island off the west coast of Scotland. The story is an inducement for Nora to respond by telling her more about her family and origins, of which she knows nothing at all.’Although Kate Atkinson is rarely dull, this novel is meandering and comes perilously close to being self-indulgent. While I expected time travel to play a more significant role in the book it seemed almost an afterthought . I usually don't enjoy that type of thing but this was fun. I did get somewhat frustrated by all the alternate realities in the final quarter of the book. The traditionalist in me wanted to know the "real" story, but that is Atkinson's point...that lies with the storyteller who "knows how it ends". later ''with a different wife altogether.'' Small children at the time, Isobel and her older brother, Charles, were left with Gordon's sour old mother, a k a the Widow, now deceased; her death was another traumatic The characterisation is exceptional. There are a lot of characters but in this author’s capable hands it matters not a jot as with a few deft strokes they are visible. I love Gwendolen, she’s one smart cookie as is Ma as you find you have no choice but to admire her guile and manifold abilities. You have to get up very early in the morning to catch her out and even then she’s probably two jumps ahead of you!! What a woman!!!

Emotionally Weird - це типове "Обоже, ця жінка вирішила ні в чому собі не відмовляти!". Пародія на тру_брітіш сімейну сагу з шотландським колоритом (багаті спадкоємиці, нещасні сім'ї, загублені діаманти, хлопчики, які не повернулися з війни, розбиті ударом голови родини, something nasty в асортименті - оце от усе). Пародія на університетський роман про кафедральні чвари. Пародія на університетський роман про сердитих молодих... а, підставте, кого треба (наприклад, фем-активісток другої хвилі). Пародія на детектив - і готичний, і cosy. Пародія на постмодерний роман, з якого щедро вихлюпується метатекст. Пародія на а-ля вікторіанський роман виховання. Пародія... Нє, досить, мабуть, хоча там ще є. No, though at times the dialogue between them is. Nora is a reluctant storyteller, but sometimes interrupts Effie to tell her what’s “wrong” with her tale – too many characters (which is true), an improbable turn of events or a character killed off (which Nora says you can’t do in a comic novel) - and Effie obliges by changing her story to suit.’

As the New York Times Review Notable Book of the Year reported, it is a part fairy tale, part mystery and part coming-of-age novel about Isobel Fairfax in the 1960's British suburb of Lythe, once the heart of an Elizabethan feudal estate and home to a young English tutor, William Shakespeare. As young Isobel becomes more and more taken in and fascinated by all of the history of the Fairfax estate, the people, and her family history, she sometimes becomes involved in Shakespearian time warps. This was one of Atkinson's earlier novels, but a wonderful addition to her literary accomplishments.