English Student Reads Book Shocker! (Behind the Scenes at the Museum - Kate Atkinson)

Member Name: lwperkins

Product:	Behind the Scenes at the Museum - Kate Atkinson
Date:	29/05/03 (315 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Excellent story

Disadvantages: None

I think you only realise the true power of books when you read one that has such an effect on you that you feel like a part of you is missing when you finally finish it. Not 'unputdownable' as such (I hate that word but I'm at a loss for a better one so it will have to do) but a book where the characters really mean something to you and you actually care about what happens to them, where when the narrator stops talking you feel disappointed because there was so much more you wanted to know.
'Behind the Scenes at the Museum' by Kate Atkinson was for me one of those books.

(Sorry if you found that intro a bit much - but I am an English student you have to expect it of me occasionally)

'Behind the Scenes at the Museum' was on my reading list for last Semester and I have to confess I avoided reading it for two incredibly pathetic reasons - 1. The front cover looked a bit strange and I found it a bit off putting 2. I didn't like the sound of the title. See, I warned you they were pathetic, how many times do you hear the phrase 'Never judge a book by its cover'? I will in future take heed!!

However when I finally got round to reading it I quickly realised the error of my ways.
I've heard people comment that it's the sort of book that takes some getting into but it is worth perservering with, but I found it grabbed me from the very first page.

Ruby Lennox is the narrator in 'Behind the Scenes at the Museum', telling the story of her family from the end of the 19th century to the early 1990's.
This is done through a clever use of narrative technique, which gives the novel its individuality without making it pretentious or difficult to read.
The linear story of 'The Family' is broken up by chapters inserted as 'footnotes' which link the families complicated history, but this jumping from past to present and back again never seems out of place. Ruby
even makes comments on future events that have not yet occurred in the narrative, but again this does not seem forced and does not detract from the story in any way.

Ruby is a wonderful narrator and the story is so successful because it is impossible not to warm to her. I felt like I knew her. It is a very funny novel, not 'laugh-out-loud don't read it on the train unless you want to look like a chuckling maniac' funny, but subtle and very clever.
The story starts at Ruby's conception in 1951 with the line 'I exist!' Ruby recalls her life from its very start inside her mother's womb and this is a fascinating way to start a story.
Seeing Ruby's mother, Bunty and her father George and her two sisters Gillian and Patricia from Ruby's eye view is sometimes poignant, often hilarious and always very entertaining.

It is set for the main part in and around York where Atkinson was born and if you know the area half the fun is identifying the places in the story - most of which are genuine York landmarks described in fantastic detail.

The only slight criticism I could find of the book is the way that all the lose ends are tied up so neatly in the concluding chapter - some of them would have been fine left untied. I appreciate that some people like everything explained at the end of a novel, but for me it was all a little too neat - some of the realism and honesty of the story was forfeited for the tidy ending.

This was Atkinson's first novel, it was a resounding success and rightly so. It was received with critical acclaim and won the 1995 Whitbread Book Of The Year.
Critics who actually know what they are talking about (as apposed to me, who didn?t like the pictures on the front cover) described the book as 'packed with images of bewitching potency' and as having 'unsettling complexity of vision.' I couldn't have said it better myself, which is why I didn't, I jus
t 'borrowed' other peoples quotes.
But that's the thing isn't it. When you read a book that you really enjoy its impossible to say why, this review very nearly simply said 'Just read it, alright, then you will see why I'm recommending it!' But of course that wouldn't have met the word count.

I have read 2 of Atkinson's other books, 'Human Croquet' and 'Emotionally Weird' since because I enjoyed this novel so much (for the record I wasn't keen on the titles or the front cover of them, either) and they both confirm that Atkinson is truly an excellent writer. However neither of them grabbed me in quite the way that ?Behind The Scenes at the Museum? did. I didn't find either of them as engaging and easy to read (that's not to say easy to read in a 'Topsy and Tim' sort of way, some of the language is quite complex in 'Behind the Scenes' and the word play, which I loved, is very much in evidence throughout.)

This is definitely a great book for Summer reading, so off you pop to Ottakars, before you forget!

(And I have just noticed that the cover illustration that put me off in the first place was done by someone called Sarah Perkins so I'm going to pretend I liked it all along now just to show my support for a fellow Perkins - we Perkins' are a talented bunch you know!!)

ISBN 0552996181
Black Swan
Publishers Price £7.99

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