Kate Atkinson’s novels are always interesting, always different, and this one takes us to fizzing, mad, big-spending, carefree London between the wars.
Shrines of Gaiety begins in 1926, when the redoubtable Nellie Coker has been released from six months in prison. Nellie has dragged herself out of poverty, presides over an empire of five nightclubs and is a mother to six very different children. Molly is feeling her age and that the world is beginning to turn against her; rivals are snapping at her heels, she frets over her children, and a new Police Inspector is determined to bring her to justice.
Gwendolen is a librarian who worked as a nurse in the Great War, and who has caught the eye of Nellie’s eldest son, Niven.
These three characters are unflappable, interesting and of their time, but Atkinson writes in an almost contemporary manner, so from time to time you have to remind yourself that this is a historical novel.
This is a difficult novel to classify. There is a range of small mysteries throughout the story, but it is not a mystery novel. It is certainly character driven – Atkinson provides many small clues as to the inner workings of her creations. The story itself lasts only a matter of months, and yet somehow references to the War and how it overshadows everything, make it seem more epic than it is. It is an entertaining novel of an age long gone but which lingers still.
Reviewed by Lesley West
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kate Atkinson won the Whitbread (now Costa) Book of the Year Award with her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum.
Her 2013 novel Life After Life, now a BBC TV series starring Thomasin McKenzie, won the South Bank Sky Arts Literature Prize and the Costa Novel of the Year Award, was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and was also voted Book of the Year by the independent booksellers associations on both sides of the Atlantic.
A God in Ruins, also a winner of the Costa Novel of the Year Award, is a companion to Life After Life, although the two can be read independently.
Her five bestselling novels featuring former detective Jackson Brodie – Case Histories, One Good Turn, When Will There Be Good News?, Started Early, Took My Dog, and Big Sky – became the BBC TV series Case Histories , starring Jason Isaacs.
Kate Atkinson was awarded an MBE in the 2011 Queen’s Birthday Honours List, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
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