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Summary: Absolutely captivating. (and hysterical.)
Review: Simply put, I didn't want to read anything after I finished this book -- I knew nothing else would compare.
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Summary: love it
Review: it's too original to be rated any less than five stars... what other book could it be compared too? a gorgeous book. made me feel better about my own tragic family situation. read it!
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Summary: Tristram Shandy of the 20th Century
Review: Kate Atkinson skillfully weaves together the life stories of a mostly hapless Yorkshire family--from the trenches of WW1 to the early 60's. She succeeds in making you care about just about everyone (though I will admit that I did get Nell's various boyfriends and fiances a bit confused.) I thought her portrait of Bunty was in particular brilliant; she succeeded in making me feel sorry for someone who was objectively a bit of a monster--poor Bunty running after the train with her half-finished scones and missing the school picnic is an image I'll NEVER forget.Ms Atkinson has a special talent for stringing together words for a style that is all her own but never strains for the obviously poetical. Only at the end does the tone falters a bit; her uncle's wedding was a bit over the top, and the "recovered memory" at the end seems to belong in another book (the exact same devise was used in the "Underground Man"--another superb novel). Otherwise the novel is almost perfect. Not to be missed.
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Summary: Family Secrets
Review: A charming book that begins with the conception of Ruby Lennox (told in her own voice) and moves through her sometimes heartbreaking life. Significant capsules of the lives of women who influence her life (her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother) are woven in. This is a British novel, told in a British voice that is at times difficult to understand (not knowing the jargon and the "mixed up" quotation marks) that moves from turn of the century (20th) through two World Wars to the 60s and then present day. There is a secret in Ruby's family--one involving Ruby, but kept from her. There are hints from cousins, overheard remarks from aunties, but Ruby dismisses then as "confusion"--people mixing up the events of her family history. But following a bitter accusation, she searches for the shoeless shoebox in her mother's closet, she knows she has confirmation of an evil deed. When the secret is revealed, she confronts her dying mother: why was it never spoken of? Ruby then learns of her mother's sorrow and protective love.
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Summary: The Family From Hell
Review: Reading this book makes you think, thank goodness I haven't been born into Ruby's family! The story is loaded with energy and imagination: Starting with Ruby's description of her own conception in the early 1950's and ending in the present, with chapter-long footnotes alternating with Ruby's account flashing back to the tragic-comic catastrophes haunting her family since WW1. It makes you laugh, it makes you cry, it makes you gape, it NEVER bores you. The characters are so alive (and some of them are truly repugnant!), they threaten to jump out of the pages. You have to read the book quickly or you stand no chance remembering all these brothers, uncles, sister, aunts and where and when and how they died (almost all of them do!) Enjoy and hopefully Human Croquet will be just as good!
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Summary: Lives up to - and surpasses - its hype
Review: The slightly surreal sound of this book - it begins with a woman narrating her own conception -made me fear this would be an annoyingly weird or obtuse book. I also was a little skeptical that the book could live up to its positive reviews. I was delighted to discover that it is not, and it does. Atkinson effortlessly gets inside the head of protagonist Ruby from, yes, conception to middle age. Interwoven with Ruby's story are the stories of her female ancestors, viewed through the prism of contemporary British history. (A thinking Englishwoman's Forrest Gump?) It's all here: emotion, vivid description, gripping plot, characters that come alive, humor, sly wit, and a truly original and fresh writing style. This is one of those books that intrudes on your life, making you want to shove everything aside so you can keep on reading it. At the same time, you dread finishing it because then there won't be any more of it to read.
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Summary: A "chick book" that ruined me!
Review: If you read a lot (more than a dozen books a month for pleasure), then you're probably familiar with the sensation of being ruined by a book. This happens when you realize that you never want it to end, can't bear not to know more, can't believe this is the last sentence, and then can't find another thing to read for upwards of a week because nothing else compares to what you've just read. So it was for me and Behind the Scenes at the Museum. This is likely to be dubbed a "chick book." So be it. If a chick book is an amazing story that deftly spans generations of filial dysfunction and decades of national history, making the reader alternately weep and guffaw, then this is a chick book. It's also one helluva read, twisting, building, then soaring to a climax that shatters the reader while finally making the narrator whole. It begins with the moment of Ruby Lennox's birth, a device that usually bothers me (consider Tristam Shandy), but Ruby more than hooked me by the end of the first chapter, and I wanted her for a blood relative by the time she described her mother's love as "autistic parenting." That this is the author's first novel makes this book even more amazing. Don't miss this one.
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Summary: An incredibly funny, engaging and entertaining first novel
Review: Kate Atkinson's "Behind The Scenes at the Museum" is an incredibly funny, engaging and entertaining first novel. It is also deservedly the 1993 Whitbread Prize winner. Atkinson's incisive study of the practical and emotional lives of four generations of Yorkshire women and their huge families never hits a false note. Richly detailed and revealing in its observation of family life, the story of Ruby Lennox and the women who preceded her is told with such great humour (mostly of the tongue-in-cheek variety) you yield to its charms instantly and allow yourself to be drawn into their lives. Yet, for all that, Ruby's portrait of her family (father, mother and sisters) isn't a pretty one. They're selfish, insensitive and so preoccupied with their own discontent they seem to prefer watching their wounds fester than work at preserving the soul of the family. The story, at the end of it, leaves you with a feeling of tragedy and sadness. For all that, Atkinson's talent is to make us believe in and care for this bunch of largely unsympathetic characters. She succeeds using a smooth and sparkling prose that's sheer delight. A small criticism - as the linear story gathers pace and unfolds, the flashbacks (interposed as minor chapters or "footnotes" to the main chapters) begin to read like distractions designed to test the patience of readers. It's frankly a narrative technique that doesn't quite work. Nevertheless, this prize winning first novel of Atkinson's is a major piece of work that should be read and enjoyed by all who love good literature. Wonderful book. Highly recommended.
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Summary: A great first novel
Review: Follow the journey of Ruby Lennox from conception to middle age and enjoy her dysfunctional family along the way. Ruby is totally centred around her "oneness" and her ability to stand apart from all of her family and see them as who they are ~ or is she? This novel is a delightfully engaging look at post-war Britain, whilst slowly unwrapping the box in which lies all of Ruby's fears. And what a surprising box that turns out to be! Kate Atkinson has created a kaleidoscope of characters and situations, all the while juggling humour, satire and family bonds, together with Ruby's very personal own story. This is a witty, beautiful and sometimes caustic tale of family, sibling rivalry, adopted babies, deaths in the family, the magnificent but hopeless Lucy-Vida, Daisies and Roses, Rubies and Pearls... The older Ruby says: "I have been to the world's end and back and now I know what I would put in my bottom drawer. I would put my sisters." Me too. Powerful stuff and compelling reading.
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Summary: Time plays with the Mind
Review: Enjoy bites of the life of Ruby Lennox and some of her more colourful relatives. Both flippantly realistic and romantically idealised, the various competing agendas of the stories, the telling of the stories, the imaginings of the stories, can seem like a confused tumble of impressions, ideas and certainty (all the more suspect because it seems so certain - and how can Ruby know?) The effect: 1) You can read it and be superficially entertained. 2) You can start to question the reliability of the narrator Ruby (the book I think, is an attempt at self-reflexivity). 3) You can start questioning not only the narrator Ruby, but that of any story told. 4) You can reflect on yourself and the way memory and truth (and untruth) collide, mesh, gel, repel. 5) Also, as an added bonus, it tests what a "good" reader you are - did you get all the clues, did you see that, Ruby TOLD you, why didn't you get it? Perhaps a comment on reading as a whole? Really a mind bending experience.
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