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A review by monsterful_alex
Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson
5.0
It's been a long time since I've been hooked by a book with so much childish enthusiasm: reading in the middle of the night, not being able to sleep until i've finished two more chapters, and deciding to have oranges and biscuits for lunch instead of cooking something, because I only had 100 pages to go.
Needless to say it is an immersive narrative, you forget yourself as you plunge into the time-travelling histories of the Fairfaxes - past, present, and everything in between. You have a bit of murder here, a splash of madness there, sprinkled with some 60s suburbia stories, interbellic intermezzos and magical woods, add to that a bit of childhood trauma dealt with with Atkinsonian dry humour, and voila, you have yourself an amazing intricate coming-of-age/faery story/historical drama/thriller novel. It's not as well-knit together as it could have been, plotwise, but it was satisfying enough to give me a couple of sleepless nights and that is as good as it gets.
Needless to say it is an immersive narrative, you forget yourself as you plunge into the time-travelling histories of the Fairfaxes - past, present, and everything in between. You have a bit of murder here, a splash of madness there, sprinkled with some 60s suburbia stories, interbellic intermezzos and magical woods, add to that a bit of childhood trauma dealt with with Atkinsonian dry humour, and voila, you have yourself an amazing intricate coming-of-age/faery story/historical drama/thriller novel. It's not as well-knit together as it could have been, plotwise, but it was satisfying enough to give me a couple of sleepless nights and that is as good as it gets.