I've been looking forward to reading this for a while now and the novel didn't disappoint. Basically it's a family saga, but that description doesn't do it justice. There's a lot of humour and a fair sprinkling of farce in amongst the various Lennox and Barker family tragedies. And with York as a backdrop, too: excellent. ( )

I enjoyed this immensely, especially for the originality of the narration and timeline. ( )

Kate Atkinson won the 1995 Whitbread (Costa) Book of the Year Award for her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, before going on to write six more books, so far, including the popular Jackson Brodie mystery series.

In Museum, the precocious narrator Ruby Lenox takes us behind the scenes of the museum of her family history, starting with the very moment of her conception. Interleaved between the chapters of Ruby’s biography are lengthy “footnotes” that provide the story of earlier generations, back to Ruby’s great-grandmother.

This is a book about parents, children, sisters, love, marriage, infidelity, war, death, pets and the general hodgepodge of family life. Ruby is a beguilingly effervescent narrator, finding humor in the darkest cubbyholes of her family’s past and, eventually, finding her own place in the family gallery.

Also posted on Rose City Reader. ( )

Before she introduced readers to PI Jackson Brodie, Atkinson wrote this book, her first, and to say it's brilliant would be an understatement. I can understand why it won the Whitbread Book of the Year award. A novel that reads like a surreal memoir, the book is narrated by Ruby Lennox, who starts her tale at the moment of her conception. The family she's born into is dysfunctional at best, and Ruby relates her life and that, in alternating chapters, of key members of her family tree, filling in the family history in what she calls "footnotes." The passages covering relatives who fought in the World Wars, were especially well done.

But Ruby is, as many narrators are, unreliable, albeit unwittingly, and in her quest to make sense of her family, she finds herself.

Atkinson's prose is fluid and in turns humorous and moving, in a way that kept me reading (even if it took me a long time). The words sucked me in and I came to fully believe in these characters. They became real, especially Ruby. This is definitely going to make my list of all-time favorite books. ( )

Ruby Lennox knew almost from conception that she was unwanted. Her mother Bunty, father George, and sisters Patricia and Gilliam live Above the Shop (a pet shop) that George and Bunty grudgingly own and run. Ruby insightfully narrates their lives, inserting "footnotes" between each chapter that detail the lives of her ancestors.

The story that unfolds of an ordinary family kept me reading primarily because of Ruby's voice rather than my interest in the characters (I was often annoyed with them) or the plot (internal and retrospective even while being narrated in present tense). At times beautifully descriptive, it was an often unsettling story that I found compelling even when I did not exactly enjoy it. ( )