By Kate Atkinson
Doubleday Canada
Anyone who follows my book reviews knows that Kate Atkinson is right at the top of my list of favourite authors. I loved her Jackson Brodie mysteries – please may she write another one! – but her other novels have also ranked way up there. Life After Life was such an incredible achievement, that I am still in awe of it five years after reading it. A God In Ruins was nearly an equal accomplishment. Her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, captured my imagination immediately and I’ve got a permanent and recurring note to self to reread it and every one of her books. So yes, I’m a fan.
Atkinson’s latest novel is Transcription, the story of Juliet Armstrong, a young woman who is mysteriously recruited into the secret service in London during the Second World War. She finds herself responsible for transcribing conversations between a British agent who is posing as the leader of a group of German sympathizers.
It goes even further when Juliet is asked to become a spy. She leaps right in, going undercover as Iris Carter-Jenkins, an alter identity who is tasked with infiltrating an upper-class friend group who may or may not be on Germany’s side.
Much of the novel feels like a lark — an adventure that Juliet has been thrust into, with little experience or training. She manages to scrape by – barely – but gets herself into plenty of pickles along the way.
Juliet is a literalist and Atkinson has some fun with language via Juliet’s thoughts. When Juliet overhears the question, “Cat’s got your tongue?” She thinks to herself: What an awful idea. … How would the cat get it – by accident or design?
Much of the novel takes place in Juliet’s inner dialogue, and that’s a fine place to be. Juliet is quite hilarious at time and she’s both clueless enough and intelligent enough to make the story interesting.
And when the story comes around to serious business – the business of murder and treason – it makes a very satisfying read indeed.
The book opens in 1981, when Juliet as an older woman has returned to London. She’s been hit by a car and is reflecting on her life. A couple of snippets from that early chapter reveal Atkinson’s wit and style.
“It was all such a waste of breath. War and peace. Peace and war. It would go on forever without end,” Juliet thinks to herself. Later, she thinks: “There was to be a royal wedding. Even now, as she lay on this London pavement with these kind strangers around her, a sacrificial virgin was being prepared somewhere up the road, to satisfy the need for pomp and circumstance.”
Atkinson based the novel on an MI5 document describing a wartime spy, who lived a regular life as a bank clerk. MI5 released documents including transcriptions of the spy’s conversations that made Atkinson curious about who might’ve typed them. Thus Juliet was born. And readers everywhere will benefit from that.
Atkinson will be appearing in Vancouver on Saturday, September 29 at 7:30 p.m. at St. Andrew’s Wesley United Church, 1022 Nelson Street. Tickets are available through the Vancouver Writers Fest.
Tracy.sherlock@gmail.com
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