Funny, witty, devil-may-care writing style that nevertheless made me think about power, morality, and twists of fate. The plot was both clever and carried a subtle message about who is the real criminal and what is the true crime. i read it twice, first for myself and then in my book club, where it was my reading choice.
'Atkinson on her finest form. A marvel of plate-spinning narrative knowhow, a peak performance of consummate control.' OBSERVER
'This is the perfect novel for uncertain times.' THE TIMES
'I can think of few writers other than Dickens who can match it' SUNDAY TIMES
'Brilliant' RICHARD OSMAN
'Kate Atkinson is simply one of the best writers working today, anywhere in the world' GILLIAN FLYNN
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1926, and in a country still recovering from the Great War, London has become the focus for a delirious new nightlife. In the clubs of Soho, peers of the realm rub shoulders with starlets, foreign dignitaries…
It combined humor and sorrow while immersing me in a world that is both alien and familiar. I appreciated the way I was drawn into that world and and made to appreciate how the protagonist was forced to make difficult choices out of love and desperation.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys, this gloriously entertaining novel is “fast-paced, keen-eyed and very funny ... about race, power and the history of Harlem all disguised as a thrill-ride crime novel" (San Francisco Chronicle).
"Ray Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked..." To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a decent life for himself and his family. He and his wife Elizabeth are expecting their second child, and if her parents…
This was another book that transported me to another world. It's written so poetically and is populated by such eccentric and dlightful characters. Its particular gift is to demonstrate the 'roundaboutation' of its story by a roundabout way of telling it. Wonderful book.
Shortlisted for Best Novel in the Irish Book Awards
Longlisted for the 2020 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction
From the acclaimed author of Man Booker-longlisted History of the Rain
'Lyrical, tender and sumptuously perceptive' Sunday Times
'A love letter to the sleepy, unhurried and delightfully odd Ireland that is all but gone' Irish Independent
After dropping out of the seminary, seventeen-year-old Noel Crowe finds himself back in Faha, a small Irish parish where nothing ever changes, including the ever-falling rain.
But one morning the rain stops and news reaches the parish - the electricity is finally arriving. With it…
Based on the true story of two Dark Age queens whose rivalry dominated post-Roman European politics, this novel brings to life a time almost lost to history. Brunhilda, a king's daughter given in marriage to a Frankish king, enters a world that despises women. Suddenly thrust into power and repeatedly facing loss and grief, she seeks to revive a new Rome based on justice and prosperity. Her implacable foe, Fredegunda, is a former slave concubine who lives only for personal gain. Insanely jealous of high-born Brunhilda, she uses seduction, murder, war, and witchcraft in her bid to destroy her. Can Brunhilda survive this onslaught of evil? Can her vision survive?
