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Loading... Behind the scenes at the museum (original 1995; edition 2008)by Kate Atkinson
Work InformationBehind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson (1995)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Darky humourous look at four generations of late 19C - mid 20C Yorkshire women with decidedly mixed feelings (honest ones) about their children; epiphanies re 'leading the wrong life' resonate throughout. Better 2nd time around when one can concentrate on the story, words and imagery rather than only plot. Set mostly in York, England, this is a multigenerational family saga in which protagonist Ruby Lennox narrates the story of her life from conception in 1951 into adulthood. She of her distant mother, two siblings, grandmother, and great grandmother. Ruby inserts what she calls “footnotes” to provide the necessary background and historic context. It is character-driven. It covers family secrets and tragedies. The writing is solid. My main issue with it is that it is not particularly engaging. I was not enthralled with the idea of a narrator that was self-aware at conception, especially in a book that is realistic in all other ways. It really drags in places, and I was tempted to set it aside. I liked it but didn’t love it. This is one of those marmite books that people seem to either love or hate. As you can see, from my 5 star rating, I loved it! But, I wasn't always sure that I would. I read it for my book group and the description wasn't promising. It seemed to be about a bunch of Yorkshire women blaming their husbands for all their wrong choices in life. I think I married one of those, so you can see why I was a little wary :) But Kate Atkinson writes with a light and amusng style and the fact that the main story is viewed through the eyes of a child makes it entertaining and accessible. Much of it is very much a kitchen-sink drama, with drudgery, family tragedies and infidelities throughout - which is entirely in keeping with the 1950s / 60s setting. But think Adrian Mole rather than Harold Pinter. Those who didn't like it pointed to the large number of background characters, that can be difficult to keep track of and are often met out of sequence. It is very much like somebody narrating their family history and talking about people that they know well, but you have never met. The structure is also quirky. The main story of Ruby's childhood is fairly straightforward and dealt with in sequence (but there is an early mystery that you sense she is blanking out - although the hints are there throughout). But each chapter has a 'footnote', which is frequently longer than the chapter itself, that deals with some aspect of Ruby's recent ancestry. The best way to deal with it is to view it as a novel and a series of vignettes / short stories running in parallel. One of my fellow book-clubbers also wrote out Ruby's family tree as she read the book to help keep track of everybody (wish I'd thought of that). Who would enjoy this book? Anybody who likes a quirky style, those who can handle multiple characters; and those who like to be kept guessing, because some things are hinted at, but not revealed until right near the very end. Incidentally, no museums in this book. The reference is to the Castle Museum in York, which has artifacts from a variety of periods and specialises in common social history. no reviews | add a review
Belongs to Publisher SeriesEn bok för alla (2006) AwardsNotable Lists
In her profoundly moving, uniquely comic debut, Kate Atkinson introduces readers to the mind and world of Ruby Lennox, born above a pet shop in York at the halfway point of the twentieth century, and determined to understand both the family that precedes her and the life that awaits her. Taking her own conception as her starting point, the irrepressible Ruby narrates a story of four generations of women, from her great-grandmother's affair with a French photographer, to her mother's unfulfilled dreams of Hollywood glamour, to her young sister's efforts to upstage the Queen on Coronation Day. Hurtling in and out of both World Wars, economic downfalls, the onset of the permissive '60s, and up to the present day, Ruby paints a rich and vivid portrait of family heartbreak and happiness. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.914Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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On a practical level, the intertwined narratives of many generations playing through the same script are very hard to keep straight, and I ended up needing a diagram to remember if Frank was Nell's husband or Alice's and how exactly Edmund was related to Bunty and who exactly Betty was, again? I get the parallels Atkinson is trying to draw, but they work better when she gives the characters enough individuality that the reader can keep them straight.
The true redeeming aspect of the novel is Ruby -- the protagonist. Her thoughts are vivid, full of metaphor and symbolism and yet relatable. The book truly shines in Ruby's nightmares -- inchoate end of the world fantasies, in which the familiar twists with a certainty of catastrophe -- and the way in which they mature with Ruby. These nightmares reflect the heart of Atkinson's narrative -- the way in which the families are both familiar and yet ill-meaning, self-involved and chaotic, which she does equally skillfully. ( )