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jennyyates 's review for:
Shrines of Gaiety
by Kate Atkinson
This is set in the glamorous nightclub world of London in the 20s. The main character, Nellie Coker, gets out of jail just as the novel begins. She’s the owner of a string of exotic and highly successful nightclubs across the city, but there’s also a lot of shady stuff always going on in the premises.
The scene is exciting, but for some reason, Atkinson’s usually sparkling writing is a bit diminished in this novel. Maybe it’s that there are just too many characters: besides Nellie Coker, there are her five mostly grown children. There’s Frobisher, a police detective out to solve the disappearances of young girls across London, and his French wife, who lives in a dream world of her own. There are two shady cops. There are two naïve young girls from the countryside, Freda and Florence, trying to become famous on the stage. There’s a young heiress, a former librarian, named Gwendoline, who’s romantically involved with Niven Coker (Nellie’s oldest), but in love with Frobisher, and who gets a job managing one of Nellie’s nightclubs.
Managing all these characters is a handful. Atkinson does a pretty good job of spooling out the plot, but sometimes the timeline is confusing, as she tries to generate suspense around what’s happened to Freda and Florence.
One basic premise of the book is that Nellie, who looks like a harmless old woman, is always in control, no matter how many people are trying to take away her empire. She’s a good character, although she remains rather a silhouette. London in the 20s does come across, with lots of glittering detail, and it’s clear that a lot of research went into this book.
The scene is exciting, but for some reason, Atkinson’s usually sparkling writing is a bit diminished in this novel. Maybe it’s that there are just too many characters: besides Nellie Coker, there are her five mostly grown children. There’s Frobisher, a police detective out to solve the disappearances of young girls across London, and his French wife, who lives in a dream world of her own. There are two shady cops. There are two naïve young girls from the countryside, Freda and Florence, trying to become famous on the stage. There’s a young heiress, a former librarian, named Gwendoline, who’s romantically involved with Niven Coker (Nellie’s oldest), but in love with Frobisher, and who gets a job managing one of Nellie’s nightclubs.
Managing all these characters is a handful. Atkinson does a pretty good job of spooling out the plot, but sometimes the timeline is confusing, as she tries to generate suspense around what’s happened to Freda and Florence.
One basic premise of the book is that Nellie, who looks like a harmless old woman, is always in control, no matter how many people are trying to take away her empire. She’s a good character, although she remains rather a silhouette. London in the 20s does come across, with lots of glittering detail, and it’s clear that a lot of research went into this book.