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3.46 AVERAGE
3.46 AVERAGE
Very promising , but did not always deliver. The narrative jumps between 1940, 1950, and 1981, with a large cast of characters (some with aliases) and a bit of confusion between the times. Juliet is plucked from obscurity in the typing pool to transcribe conversations between an MI5 agent and Nazi sympathizers in WWII London. The plot thickens, of course. Juliet is sometimes naive and sometimes not very likable.
Atkinson images the life of a young woman who worked for MI5 in the month leading up to and after WWII starts. She transcribed talks between a fake Gestapo agent and British followers of Hitler. Then it jumps to her life in 1950 as a BBC producer. There's some back and forth in time and confusion as to whether or not she is still an agent. Parts were intriguing. On the whole, I found it difficult to follow.
I tried....I really, really tried. I hung in there 'til the halfway mark but I'm packing it in. Such a disappointment as I've enjoyed other books by this author & heard rave reviews about this one. It's probably just a simple mismatch between reader & book. Not finishing a book always makes me feel like I missed something but I wasn't enjoying myself & with so many other books to read, I'm waving the white flag. On to the next one....
Well, I didn't expect that! The ending was a pleasant surprise, not that it was necessarily pleasant, just that I liked being surprised.
My husband asked me last night if I was liking this book. It took me awhile to get engrossed, and then I didn't want to put it down, not a big "love affair" kind of a like, just a simple "like." I wanted to know where the story was going, find out what happens to each character, and was curious if there was more than meets the eye.
A large part of the story and characters' names reminded me of John Le Carré's George Smiley stories, the major distinction being this tale is told by a woman, and that approach interested me. At times sounding frivolous and at times sounding thoughtful, Juliet Armstrong narrates her story with humor and the heart of a young girl seeking. (Seeking what? Seeking a life in pre-war and war-torn England.) Of course, whether you read humor in her tale or not is up to you, because the words on the page aren't prefaced with "read with humor."
My husband asked me last night if I was liking this book. It took me awhile to get engrossed, and then I didn't want to put it down, not a big "love affair" kind of a like, just a simple "like." I wanted to know where the story was going, find out what happens to each character, and was curious if there was more than meets the eye.
A large part of the story and characters' names reminded me of John Le Carré's George Smiley stories, the major distinction being this tale is told by a woman, and that approach interested me. At times sounding frivolous and at times sounding thoughtful, Juliet Armstrong narrates her story with humor and the heart of a young girl seeking. (Seeking what? Seeking a life in pre-war and war-torn England.) Of course, whether you read humor in her tale or not is up to you, because the words on the page aren't prefaced with "read with humor."
This was highly entertaining, mainly because of the quirky personality of Juliet, the main character, a 20-something woman in 1940 who is recruited to work for MI5, the British spy agency. Primarily her work consists of listening to covert recordings of Nazi sympathizers and transcribing them, but on occasion she is called upon to do more than that. Seen mainly as a typist by the older men she works for, Juliet has received very little in the way of espionage training and is constantly trying to put together the puzzle pieces of the organization she's embedded in, assessing who works for whom and what it is they are actually up to. I liked the unusualness of the story, which sometimes switches to 1950, when the war (obviously) is over and Juliet is no longer officially employed by MI5 (although the question arises: do they ever really let go of you?). I didn't find the time-switching difficult at all (in some books, time jumps bug me a lot, but not here). I liked Juliet's obviously sharp intelligence, combined with a thick slice of naiveté (partly due to the time period: she's not worldly about sexuality, in particular) and founded on a high-end education, thanks to a scholarship, which resulted in knowledge of languages and more than a little Shakespeare. She's alone in the world, no parents or siblings, but she makes friends in her strange job and goes out after work and enjoys what London could offer young people in the time before the Blitz, and I also like how she related to other people and how she judged them and summed them up.
This is my second book by this author; I also enjoyed Life After Life.
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This is my second book by this author; I also enjoyed Life After Life.
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Atkinson is a marvel at her craft. In Transcription, she brings the slow-boil suspense of her Jackson Brodie novels to the WWII London of Life After Life with a highly entertaining protagonist who fights her war as a typist-cum-spy. Atkinson's wit and heart shine in Juliet along with every character that orbits her world. I finished this novel three days ago and still miss it. My only consolation is the anticipation of another Brodie novel in the works.
On the one hand, this book is pretty interesting (and side note, it's a good follow-up/companion to The Crown and '17 Carnations'). On the other, it is rather convoluted and winds around in a way that I found hard to follow, even reading it over a series of evenings -- I kept forgetting who was who and having to flip back to try to find it out. But Atkinson is always an enjoyable writer, and the world of post-WWII broadcasting and during-WWII espionage was fun to delve into.
Kate Atkinson is one of my very favorite authors. She writes beautifully complicated characters whose lives contain a multitude of options. So much popular literature is filled with characters written to fit the ending. Good characters are just like the rest of us, so many things can happen, some by chance and some made more likely by our choices. Juliet is that sort of character, so many possibilities.
I loved Juliet for roughly the final 60% of the book, but I started out not really caring what happened to her. I loved that Atkinson started her as a true innocent, but a person can be credulous and naive without being dull. We learn later some exciting things were happening, but all we see is someone transcribing overheard conversations.
I think the failure to engage in the first third is a pacing issue caused by communicating the story through those transcribed conversations. This is inherently unengaging. When I was a lawyer I worked on some interesting cases, but reviewing conversations and depositions is boring. Really boring. The case gets interesting when the evidence is distilled and a narrative drawn therefrom. In the second part of the book Atkinson gave us that gripping narrative, in the first she left the reader to engage in document review.
It is a complicated story that requires a great deal of setup, and I suppose the transcripts and actual teatime antisemitic rants do that, but they provide no action.
For the most part, this is a good book, a compelling book, but its no A God in Ruins or Life after Life. (I did enjoy the parallels between the Hitler supporters and the Trump supporters. Subtle, but clear to anyone with a even minor grasp of history.) The last 3rd reached the level of those earlier Atkinson books, but as a whole this is less engaging and powerful than those. So Atkinson is a victim of her own success, she has set such a high bar. So this is a 3.5 star which is better than most anything else you are likely to read.
I loved Juliet for roughly the final 60% of the book, but I started out not really caring what happened to her. I loved that Atkinson started her as a true innocent, but a person can be credulous and naive without being dull. We learn later some exciting things were happening, but all we see is someone transcribing overheard conversations.
I think the failure to engage in the first third is a pacing issue caused by communicating the story through those transcribed conversations. This is inherently unengaging. When I was a lawyer I worked on some interesting cases, but reviewing conversations and depositions is boring. Really boring. The case gets interesting when the evidence is distilled and a narrative drawn therefrom. In the second part of the book Atkinson gave us that gripping narrative, in the first she left the reader to engage in document review.
It is a complicated story that requires a great deal of setup, and I suppose the transcripts and actual teatime antisemitic rants do that, but they provide no action.
For the most part, this is a good book, a compelling book, but its no A God in Ruins or Life after Life. (I did enjoy the parallels between the Hitler supporters and the Trump supporters. Subtle, but clear to anyone with a even minor grasp of history.) The last 3rd reached the level of those earlier Atkinson books, but as a whole this is less engaging and powerful than those. So Atkinson is a victim of her own success, she has set such a high bar. So this is a 3.5 star which is better than most anything else you are likely to read.
funny
mysterious
tense
medium-paced