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Kate Atkinson's Novel Emotionally Weird

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My first review of the year was for Kate Atkinson's debut novel Behind the Scenes at the Museum, which inspired me to read more of my favorite authors' back catalogues. It seems fitting to end the year with a review of Atkinson's third novel, 'Emotionally Weird,' which was first published in 2000 and tells the story of Euphemia Stuart-Murray and her mother Nora, who live on a remote Scottish island. Effie is telling Nora about her life as a student in Dundee, where she lives with her Star Trek-obsessed boyfriend Bob. Effie, on the other hand, has concerns about her family history, and what she really wants is for Nora to reveal who her biological father is. Atkinson's sense of fun has always come through in her work, but 'Emotionally Weird' is the first of her books that can be described as a comic novel. The depiction of life at the University of Dundee in the early 1970s supposedly bears little resemblance to the Scottish higher education institution a...
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Kate Atkinson's Behind the Scenes at the Museum

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'Behind the Scenes at the Museum' is Kate Atkinson's debut novel, first published in 1995 and narrated by Ruby Lennox, born in 1952 to a middle-class family who lives above a pet shop in York. The plot alternates between chapters recounting significant events in Ruby's childhood during the 1950s and 1960s and extended "footnotes" about her family's earlier generations told in non-chronological order. Most importantly, what happened to Ruby's great-grandmother Alice has ramifications for the entire family for many years to come. 'Behind the Scenes at the Museum,' like Atkinson's most recent novels Life After Life and A God in Ruins, is a multi-generational family saga with a twisting structure that, thankfully, doesn't distract too much from her brilliant character observation. With four sprawling generations to contend with, the Lennox family tree is more complex than that of the Todd family in Atkinson's later novels, but the conne...
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Kate Atkinson's A God in Ruins

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  Kate Atkinson's previous novel, Life After Life, published in 2013, told the story (or rather stories) of Ursula Todd, who lives her life several times over with very different outcomes. Her most recent book, 'A God in Ruins,' is a "companion novel" rather than a sequel that focuses on Ursula's younger brother Teddy. It spans Teddy's life across the twentieth century and four generations of the Todd family, focusing on Teddy's childhood in Fox Corner, his wartime experiences as a pilot flying a Halifax bomber, and his later post-war years with his family. He marries his childhood sweetheart Nancy but has a strained relationship with their daughter Viola, who shows little appreciation for the horrors Teddy witnessed while serving in Bomber Command. Although the structure of 'Life After Life' appeared gimmicky at first, its real strengths were Atkinson's excellent storytelling and a cast of engaging characters, both of which are also presen...
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Kate Atkinson's Life After Life

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  I recently finished Kate Atkinson's first Jackson Brodie novel, 'Case Histories,' which I thought was good but not spectacular. Several other bloggers suggested that I read Atkinson's other stand-alone novels, particularly 'Behind the Scenes at the Museum' and her most recent work, 'Life After Life,' which was nominated for this year's Women's Prize for Fiction. I am happy to report that they were correct! The basic concept of 'Life After Life' is similar to that of the film 'Groundhog Day,' but in a very different setting with less amusing outcomes. Ursula Todd, born on a snowy day in February 1910 to a wealthy family, lives her life several times over. However, unlike Phil Connors, Ursula is unaware of this, despite having frequent feelings of déjà vu. The book focuses on several alternate versions of pivotal moments in her life that lead her in very different directions. In one life, she dies as a child after falling off the ...
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Kate Atkinson's Case Histories

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  I have reserved 'Life After Life' by Kate Atkinson, which is currently on hold at the library, so in case I don't get a chance to read it before the Women's Prize for Fiction event at the Southbank Centre in June, I thought I'd read the first of the Jackson Brodie novels, 'Case Histories,' to get a feel for Atkinson's writing. Jackson Brodie, a former police inspector turned private investigator, is working on three seemingly unrelated cold cases in the Cambridge area: the disappearance of a three-year-old girl in the 1970s, the murder of a solicitor's daughter, and another murder following a domestic incident between husband and wife.  These crimes are all linked in some way, but how? Atkinson excels at suspense, especially when it is later revealed that Jackson has a few dark family secrets of his own, which adds to the story's intrigue. I also enjoyed her character observations and Atkinson's dry humor. Although 'Case Histories' ...
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Jessica Andrews's "Saltwater"

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Based on my blog content over the last few months, you'd think I'd given up on fiction, but I've recently resumed reading more novels. Some aspects of Jessica Andrews' debut 'Saltwater' reminded me a lot of Jessie Greengrass' 'Sight,' especially the visceral imagery about changing bodies and an emerging sense of self. Based on Andrews' life thus far, it appears that there is a strong element of autofiction in this coming-of-age story in which Lucy is navigating the world, from growing up in Sunderland to her student years in London to inheriting a cottage in Donegal from her grandfather after she graduates from university. Lucy's journey is centered on her relationship with her mother and alcoholic father, as well as the consequences of their separation. Andrews' depiction of adolescent life in the mid-Noughties is flawless in terms of accuracy, atmosphere, and tone. It's a very specific era in which MSN and MySpace briefly dominated ...
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The Crossroads by Niccolo Ammaniti

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  Niccol Ammaniti's 'The Crossroads' is a darkly humorous thriller that won the Premio Strega - the Italian equivalent of the Man Booker Prize - in 2007. Unsatisfied with their lives, Rino Zena and his low-life buddies Danilo Aprea and Quattro Formaggi plan a bank raid and the ostensibly perfect crime. But events quickly take them in unexpected directions. This story ranges from the ridiculous to the extremely violent - I should warn you that the contents of this book are not for the faint of heart. Although the father-son relationship between Christiano and Rino was intriguing, it was the supporting characters who stood out for me - how could you forget a lunatic with the moniker Quattro Formaggi? 'The Crossroads' is unlike anything else I've read recently, and I appreciated the gritty depiction of 'real' Italy, as it is uncommon to find a completely unromanticized view of the country in modern literature. The story is told in very short segments. XEM T...
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