Kate Atkinson
A God In Ruins (Costa Award Winner 2015)
Not The End Of The World (short stories)
I am a great
fan of Kate Atkinson and, if I could write like her in even a small way, I
would be thrilled. Ever since I read ‘Behind the Scenes at the Museum’, in my
early twenties, I have loved her work.
I particularly enjoyed the Jackson Brodie series, helped by the TV
dramatisation starring Jason Isaacs at the height of his sex appeal. Atkinson
is an award-winning, literary writer, ambitious, confident and original, but
she also has the ability to write in an extremely compelling and readable
style, and the capacity to bend, combine and reinvigorate genres. I have tried
to analyse her technique but it is difficult to actually see it, which I think
is the point. She writes in an apparentky effortless way.
There is a pacy fluidity to her prose, which is tightly packed with
narrative detail but still not bogged down in unwieldy imagery or purple prose.
Her characters leap off the page, poignant, plausible, monstrous. Her plots
twist and turn, taking the reader down unexpected alleys. She is not averse to making
use of magic realism and exploring new ways of telling a tale, but her writing
never seems forced or precious.
This year, I have read two of her books. One was a collection of short
stories I downloaded when I was doing my MA in Creative Writing last year, as I
had to write an essay on the short story as a genre. However, I never actually
got round to reading her collection at the time as I had so much else to read.
I started reading it a few months after I graduated and found myself rapidly
pulled into the linked but independent tales, which was quite a surprise as I
don’t generally read volumes of short stories very often (except for the
purposes of university essays!).
I’m not
generally keen on volumes of short stories, though I like the genre in itself.
I prefer to read short stories in occasional small doses and collections tend
to invite you to keep reading. Generally, I find I end up with a cloying
feeling of having read too much, my mind clogged with different characters and
events that each exist in its own bubble.
Atkinson’s collection overcomes this by being a series of
interconnected short stories, bound together by the classical myths that
underpin them, though this classical inspiration is not always obvious to a
casual reader despite several newspaper reviewers implying that the magical
realism aspect is overdone. Personally, I felt it was often very subtle, as
when a dead woman who later comes back to life sees pomegranate seeds in a
dish, reminding us of the tale of Persephone. Where it is more obvious, as when
the nanny, Missy’s, boots turn into silver sandals and a quiver of arrows
appears on her back, it felt quite natural and thematically appropriate. One
critic I read suggested that Atkinson’s use of Latin and Greek quotations at
the start of the stories serves mostly to highlight the triviality of the tales
themselves, and that it was unclear why Atkinson had chosen Ancient Greek
mythology as her underlying inspiration, as opposed to myths from other
cultures. However, I would counter this by asking why not? And I would also say that, for me, these
stories sparkled with vivacity and were a sheer pleasure to read, so if
Atkinson wishes to indulge herself and show off her knowledge, that’s fine by
me.
The links between the stories
aren’t always obvious, particularly on a first reading. Some characters are
referred to in different stories, and there is an echoing here and there of
themes and ideas. One review I read claimed that Atkinson was in love with the
sound of her own voice in these stories, implying that they lacked depth and
genuine meaning, and I can see how readers might feel this, certainly with some
of the more superficial tales. However, I felt that even the most obvious, the
ones that used most literary trickery and experimentation for its own sake,
were still highly readable, and some of the stories have stayed with me months
after I read them – particularly the story of the boy whose prostitute mother
is dying of cancer.
What makes these stories so compelling
is Atkinson’s characteristic verve and energy. They fizz along and carry the
reader with them. I found the characters vivid and convincing, though their
stories were often far from realistic. The stories also radiate with flashes of
Atkinson’s wonderful dark humour. All collections of short stories are going to
contain individual pieces that appeal more or less to different readers, that
are objectively various in terms of quality even, but I enjoyed even those
stories I felt were the weakest in the collection. I have read this collection
twice this year, which I can’t say about any other volume of short stories I’ve
read, including those of the fabulous Alice Munro.
RATING: Not The End Of
The World *****
The second
Atkinson book I read this year was a long novel which won the Costa Prize in
2015. I had downloaded a few of her novels, and decided, quite randomly, to
read this one, not realising quite how long it is until I was well into it and
fully involved in the story.
It tells the story of Teddy Todd, a World War 2 fighter pilot,
beginning in his childhood and narrating his life story and those of his
daughter and grandchildren. Having not
read ‘Life After Life’, I didn’t realise that Teddy is actually the much-loved
younger sibling of a character from that novel, Ursula, but that doesn’t matter
at all as this novel stands entirely on its own.
As I write this, I haven’t
finished the book so this review is rather pre-emptive. Nevertheless, I enjoyed
the chapters I have read very much. The novel moves about in time with little
warning – the reader simply has to keep up – but this didn’t feel like a chore,
and I found it easy to work out where we were in chronological terms. Teddy is
a charming child, realistic and sympathetic. He has the fortune/misfortune of
being immortalised by a family friend in a series of popular children’s novels
(clearly based on Richmal Crompton’s Just William books) about the redoubtable
Augustus, novels he is vaguely embarrassed by. Teddy grows up to be a decorated
war hero, but his marriage to his childhood sweetheart, Nancy Shawcross, is an
unhappy, unfulfilling one, and his daughter, the hideous Viola (a brilliant
monster of a woman whose behaviour made me laugh and cringe simultaneously), is
a disappointment. He has a better relationship with his grandchildren, however,
who are both damaged to some degree by their ridiculous, self-centred mother.
I had to leave the novel at the
point where Atkinson is just beginning to describe Teddy’s experience of the
war, which has been hinted at in previous chapters but not fully explored, but
the writing so far makes me know that I will return to it soon to finish
reading it. I have an inkling of where the story is going due to reading some
online reviews, and I now want to read ‘Life After Life’ too.
RATING: A God In Ruins *****
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