The artist Cezanne said that we live in a rainbow of chaos. Elements of the chaos theory permeate this highly imaginative collection of short stories. They are full of non-linear events, parallel worlds, and characters making limitless choices resulting in far-reaching consequences. But the apparent randomness of the bizarre events still have patterns and connections.
In Normal Rules Don’t Apply Atkinson lets her creativity flow. Fate strikes in the first story, ‘The Void’. A cataclysmic event happens for five minutes each day worldwide. Every person and animal outside dies, except the birds and bees.
This theme is continued in Gene-sis where Kitty, a ‘creative’ in advertising, becomes ‘the Creative’ after the apocalypse. She re-makes the world choosing useful animals, including talking dogs and horses, and birds and bees.
Franklin is a character appearing in many stories. He attempts to produce a novel based on the chaos theory titled ‘What If’. Franklin is a loser in life but his financial luck changes when he meets a talking racehorse.
In ‘Spellbound’ the Queen in the fairytale wants a baby but her choices reverberate through other stories in momentous consequences for other babies.
This collection is such fun, stretching my imagination while challenging my analytical ability. The humour, the random, bizarre drama, the connectedness, and the oblique reference to some of the world’s problems make it memorable.
Reviewed by Judith Grace
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