Human Croquet

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She is the author of a collection of short stories, Not the End of the World, and of the critically acclaimed novels Human Croquet, Emotionally Weird, Case Histories, and One Good Turn. She’s definitely not herself,’ Templeton murmured to the barman as they watched Nellie toasting the empty air.” Is it a hanging?’ an eager newspaper delivery boy asked no one in particular. He was short, just thirteen years old, and was jumping up and down in an effort to obtain a better view of whatever it was that had created the vaudeville atmosphere.

I don't often think that I would have enjoyed a novel more if it had been shorter. This was one of those times. The increasing craziness of Effie's story grew a bit tedious after a while and, much as I love Atkinson's writing, I was relieved when she shifted into wind-up mode. For me, this was more of a 3.5 than a 4 star read. And dozens of situational vignettes where Atkinson lampoons excruciating tutorial sessions, earnest women’s lib meetings, grotty student accommodation, deathly faculty parties and so on. Bob is also reluctantly enrolled in a philosophy course which lets Atkinson have a bit of fun with propositional logic. Stuff like that. I warn you: this one takes a while to get going. Which is not such a surprise once you realize there are approximately 15 main characters. There's at least 5 plots, probably more like 8 or 10, which sounds unmanageable but it's surprisingly breezy. Reading it felt a lot like an extremely well plotted prestige tv series, where you spend the first two episodes planting a lot of seeds and learning who everyone is, then you get to just watch it go from there. There are so many great characters in this book and it does take a while to meet them all and to really become involved, but once you are it is exactly what we expect from this author - brilliant! I cannot decide which character I liked the best. Niven, Nellie's oldest son, is intriguing. He appears just when he is needed, drives the ultimate car (for that time) and goes everywhere with his Alsatian dog. DCI John Frobisher is very likeable, so well meaning but a little too reserved. Gwendolen is excellent,and I loved watching her take on the world, as does Freda in a different way. And those are just a few. There are many, many more.Absence of Eliza has shaped our lives,'' Isobel says of her vanished mother before anything else is explained, adding that her father, Gordon, also went missing soon after her mother's disappearance, only to return seven years There, Nellie Coker is a ruthless ruler, ambitious for her six children. Niven is the eldest, his enigmatic character forged in the harsh Somme. But success breeds enemies. Nellie faces threats from without and within. Beneath the gaiety lies a dark underbelly, where one may be all too easily lost. In a country still recovering from the Great War, London is the focus for a delirious nightlife. In Soho clubs, peers of the realm rub shoulders with starlets, foreign dignitaries with gangsters, and girls sell dances for a shilling a time. Whilst not containing a maternal bone in her body, Nellie will do whatever she can to ensure the survival and elevation of her 6 children. There is the war hardened sniper and his own man, Niven, the reliable book keeper Edith, the Cambridge educated if vacuous, Betty and Shirley, expected to marry into the aristocracy, the unrooted Ramsay with his pretensions of being a novelist, and the young Kitty. Upon being released from a stint in Holloway Prison, Nellie is the toast of the town, but some sense weakness, making plans to grab her business empire, willing to do anything to hasten her downfall, others pose a danger to her family, and some threats come from within. But Nellie is no pushover, she might be getting older, but she has not lost her guile and cunning. The honest DCI John Frobisher wants to ensure Ma Coker faces justice, and recruits an unlikely spy, a provincial librarian and ex-battlefield nurse, Gwendolen Kelling, with her charismatic spirit of adventure, to help him. She is in London to finally live a life, and to find the runaway girls, Freda, chasing her pipe dreams of dancing and fame, and her naive and more innocent friend, Florence. Charles, an 18-year-old shop clerk, is obsessed with vanishing and time travel and parallel worlds. '''They're out there somewhere,' he says, gazing longingly at the night sky. ('If they've got any sense they'll

Isobel's family, such as it is, lives in a house called Arden, built after World War I on the long-lost foundations of Fairfax Manor (which, true to the family curse -- ''everything will always go wrong just when it looks as if it might Isobel has a brother named Charles, who is fascinated by topics generally regarded as science fiction. His particular interests center on alien abductions. This may be due in part to the disappearance of Charles and Isobel's mother, Eliza, when they were young. They also lost their father, Gordon, for a seven-year period immediately following the disappearance of their mother. Isobel and Charles have been more or less raised by vinegary Aunt Vinny, ''who wears funereal shades as if she's in permanent mourning for something. Her life.'' The household also includes Mr. Rice, ''the lodger who Atkinson is a striking mixture of alarming self-assurance and nervous fragility. Take, for example, two things that happened shortly after she garnered the Woman's Own award. First, she got an accountant, because she'd decided that "women have to be grown-up about money". Then, when she hit 40, she had a peculiar crisis that resulted in a year-long bout of agoraphobia. Psychiatrists proving useless, she got herself through it by reading vast numbers of books on phobias.

Book Review: Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson

Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives. Of course, the world in which Nellie Coker exists is a very dangerous one, there’s always someone wanting to take the very lucrative crown, and so it is, that Nellie’s empire comes under threat from various sources, including enemies at the gates and also within the walls! is an elusive task. Atkinson has a deft ability to convey that quality of simultaneous knowing and not knowing that is fundamental to human thought. In this way, both her novels feature a Muriel Sparkish motif of the narrative voice alternately

This is in many ways a very odd book, but it was exactly my kind of odd. My family and I have always played word games and twisted phrases around on themselves, so Isobel’s narration reads rather like I think. The text is peppered with her humorous asides in which she pokes fun at herself: "He runs a hand through his dark curls and brushes them away from his handsome forehead, ‘You’re a good pal, Iz,’ he sighs. I am his friend, his ‘pal’, his ‘chum’ — more like a tin of dog food than a member of the female sex, certainly not the object of his desire." It's a dream (or halucination) we and we arent' told it's a dream until the very end of the book. It's not real. And it's a cheat. In the hands of a lesser writer, these sorts of allusions could freight the book with too much significance, but Atkinson is, above all, out for a good time. What makes ''Human Croquet'' so successful is that it really doesn't The characterisation is exceptional. There are a lot of characters but in this author’s capable hands it matters not a jot as with a few deft strokes they are visible. I love Gwendolen, she’s one smart cookie as is Ma as you find you have no choice but to admire her guile and manifold abilities. You have to get up very early in the morning to catch her out and even then she’s probably two jumps ahead of you!! What a woman!!!In essence, this is a novel about words and story-telling. Effie and her mother or possibly not her mother Nora are the two narrators. Together in a rundown house on a desolate island off the coast of Scotland, they tell each other stories. Effie tells Nora about her experiences at university in Dundee, where she studies English literature and lives with Bob, a fellow student who spends more time stoned than he does studying. Nora, rather more relunctantly and cryptically, tells Effie about their family history. Effie's story is interspersed with extracts from the not-very-good crime fiction novel she is writing for her creative writing class. In time, the two narrative strands become increasingly tangled and eventually, as was always going to happen, they merge. In Soho, London, Nellie Coker is queen of all she surveys - successful owner of a string of nightclubs, she’s a ruthless character - knows what she wants, and also gets what she wants! She’s extremely shrewd, has a good business head, and is determined and ambitious enough to want the best education that money can buy for her six children - her nightclubs provide the means for those ambitions. croquet, that's a wonderful game -- of course we need more people for that,'' says Mrs. Baxter wistfully. The game is never played in the course of the story. But that doesn't mean that everyone hasn't been following I think the reason the story works so well is down to the voice of Isobel. She's an intelligent, witty girl, but self-critical and lonely. She has a huge crush on Malcolm, one of her school-friends, and you root for her to win him over. But I also enjoyed the mysteries of the plot - the riddle of Eliza is one thing, but the apparitions Isobel experiences left me scratching my head in wonder.