| Title | : | Behind the Scenes at the Museum |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0312150601 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780312150600 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 336 |
| Publication | : | First published March 9, 1995 |
| Awards | : | Whitbread Award First Novel and Book of the Year (1995), Exclusive Books Boeke Prize (1996) |
Behind the Scenes at the Museum Reviews
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"As a family, we are genetically disposed towards having accidents."
First and foremost, this is a challenging ambitious book, more so than Life after Life. The narrative is a labyrinth of twists and turns, false trails, loops and double helixes. There’s also an awful lot to remember because for some time it isn’t obvious which details or even characters are paramount and which stuffing. It covers four generations of a family – from WW1 almost to the present day.
On the surface it’s a tragi-comedy, a family saga, primarily narrated by Ruby Lennox, born in the 1950s. You could though say it’s a gradual debunking of family mythology to find deeper more consequential truths. All families have their mythologies – anecdotes or opportunistic fabrications that play the historian’s role in simplifying and sanitising the official story. That these anecdotes are often a form of deliberate mystification or downright evasive lies on the part of one individual we all know (or suspect) from our own families. The series currently on TV about Bloomsbury is an example of taking mythology at face value and presenting it as the whole truth. It’s one reason why the series is so wooden and bloodless. Because the writer has failed utterly to imaginatively penetrate the various anecdotes that have come to (erroneously) define Bloomsbury – so we have Virginia Woolf as some dessicated twittering bundle of nerves who’s frigid and socially barely able to string a coherent sentence together.
What Atkinson does is to lay down first the mythology – often created by parents who don’t want their children to know certain shameful truths – and then slowly peel off that outer crust. Individual memory is continually altering collective memory. The (often opportunistic) nature of memory is a central theme. And memory is often shown to reside in the secret history of objects, all of which Atkinson describes and utilises brilliantly as cyphers of more enduring truths than the fabrications created by the adult world for children. She plays all these memory games with an ingenious series of chapters known as “footnotes”. (She also lays down a mirroring impression of York itself as a city haunted by phantoms and mythologies).
Ruby’s mother Bunty is the fulcrum of the novel – the reservoir in which all the family memories have collected but she is not a reliable historian because of the severely disciplined (or repressed) nature of her emotions so when she loses her memory to dementia there is the sense that Ruby is finally free of the spurious shackles of her family history.
This is one of those novels that becomes more ingenious the more you think about it. I didn’t always enjoy it while reading it (one problem I had was that my sense of humour doesn’t quite chime with Atkinson’s which can verge on slapstick at times). There’s also so little tenderness in the book. It’s a rather brittle grey heartless world Atkinson depicts. Mothers do not love their children or their husbands. Children often don’t like their siblings. (The tone is anything but bleak though; almost it's lighthearted even when touching on tragic events. This is one of the clever quirks of this novel. It should be bleak but it manages to be exuberant often.)
There’s also a huge cast of characters and I found it virtually impossible to retain memory of them all. And a number of clever plotting tricks that continually knock you out of your sense of being able to easily follow the narrative. As a reading experience I would have given it three stars but, as I said, only now am I beginning to understand its complexities of design and intent. I have this overriding feeling it’s a novel that will reveal more of its brilliant ingenuity on a second reading.
There’s also one of the best descriptions of Italian spoken in anger I’ve ever come across when it’s described as being embroidered in blood. -
Kate Atkinson's critically and reading group lauded 'masterpiece' covering the intricate lives of a Yorkshire family from the end of the 19th century to the 1990s... which I found good, but nowhere near as good as many others found it. A solid Three Star, 6 out of 12. As ever, after reading an Atkinson book, I ask myself, why I have not read more of her work?
2013 read -
God, I can't even begin to express my depth of loathing for this book. I forced myself through to within about 60 pages of the end, but then I just couldn't bear it any more. I just didn't want to know any more about the vile people in this ridiculous family with all their dark, dirty, entirely predictable secrets.
Gaaaah! I left it behind on a plane somewhere. Should have attached a toxic warning label. -
4.5★ (January 2018)
“At the moment at which I moved from nothingness into being my mother was pretending to be asleep - as she often does at such moments. My father, however, is made of stern stuff and he didn't let that put him off.”
And this, dear reader, is how we meet Ruby Lennox. During her life, she often announces herself by calling out “It’s just Ruby!”, but she’s often addressed as “ShutupRuby!” She tells her family’s story in the first person, and mixed with her earliest memories (admittedly a lot earlier than any of mine, or, I daresay, yours) are many other people. Lots of other people. Lots and lots of other people. And they’re all related, one way or another. Or would be, if they’d married as intended.
Ruby is speaking “today” about her past and the present, while the others’ stories are told in the third person by the author. We always know when it’s Ruby, but my goodness I get my mothers and grand-mothers and great-aunts and not-really-aunts-but-probably-father’s-floozy mixed up! It’s not that they aren’t described well. It’s just that sometimes there’s so much back story that I start following that thread and losing the main one.
Reading Atkinson is like looking through someone’s photograph album with them and as they get to a group picture, they point to someone in the back row and say (this is me talking, not Atkinson) “Oh, that’s Eve! I must tell you about her. She was such a character and my cousin Adam absolutely adored her and would do anything for her. In fact, once when they were in this garden, she found an apple tree and . . . “
And there’s a long, drawn-out story that recurs now and then about them and their children who used to play with someone else’s children and they all grew up and went off to war, except for the poor sickly one who died of diphtheria, that was so sad, and . . . I get so caught up in that story that I completely lose track of what relationship the original person in the photo had to do with Ruby (or her people), that I forget where I was.
But it almost doesn’t matter. I don’t remember if she’s writing about WW1 or WW2, except that the trenches were One and the aerial dogfights were Two, and “we” (Ruby’s family) lost people in both of them, although I couldn’t tell you who was lost in which one.
War is a major backdrop to some sections. Some boyfriends and would-be fiancés march off, never to return. Atkinson reduces the cast numbers by a chap here or there, but she also gives us some unintended pregnancies here or there, so life goes on.
“Bunty had great hopes for the war; there was something attractive about the way it took away certainty and created new possibilities. Betty said it was like tossing coins in the air and wondering where they would land - and it made it much more likely that something exciting would happen to Bunty and it didn't really matter whether it was the unbelievably handsome man or a bomb - it would all mean a change in one way or another.”
I have a sneaking suspicion that the author found this to be true of war as well. It would make something happen.
“In the end, Bunty's war had been a disappointment. She lost something in the war but she didn't find out until it was too late that it was the chance to be somebody else. Somewhere at the back of Bunty's dreams another war would always play - a war in which she manned searchlights and loaded ack-acks, a war in which she was resourceful and beautiful, not to mention plucky and where 'String of Pearls' played endlessly in the de Grey Rooms as a succession of unbelievably handsome officers whirled Bunty off into another life.”
Atkinson did write a novel called
Life After Life, which was perhaps inspired by Bunty’s dreams, who knows?
This was her first novel, and what a wonderful and convoluted story it is. I love the writing, the descriptions, and the characters – some stoic, some comic, some quite mad. Not a one of them is boring. I just wish I could keep the generations straight!
An example of her writing that I enjoy:
“She pushes her hair back from her forehead in a centuries old genetic gesture of suffering. The life of a woman is hard and she'll be damned if anyone is going to rob her of her sainthood.”
Another:
“. . . he was looking at the night sky above him, spread out like an astronomer's map. And then a wave of blackness crept slowly across the sky as somebody rolled up the map."
I just wish there were a cast of characters and a big family tree, neighbours included, for people like me. I'd have given it five stars if I'd had that!
[Read and reviewed Jan 2018. I mention that because Goodreads sometimes mixes up the dates.] -
I really enjoyed this read but am finding it very hard to review without it making me sound like a rambling old biddy. There are so many things I liked about that are running through my head like little soundbites, but I can’t seem to write anything coherent about it. But I will try.
Ruby Lennox is narrating the story of her life, from the moment of her conception, through childhood, adolescence and into adulthood. Her narration is at times funny, at others sad and moving, but she has a very wry witty voice and is sometimes extremely scathing about other members of her family. I wasn’t quite 100% sure about the concept of her being able to describe her life from the point of conception, but I went with the flow and really enjoyed it in the end, particularly the way she talked about what was going to happen to members of her family in the future, dropping little hints to me about their fates which kept me glued to the book.
Her story is punctuated by footnotes (in the form of chapters) which go on to describe more of her family history, going right back to her great grandmother Alice, her grandmother Nell and mother Bunty. These footnotes can be a little confusing at first – they are not told in chronological order and focus on quite a number of characters, but they do help create a vivid picture of a family over the course of the 20th century. It is not until you get to the end of the book that all these footnotes come together with the main story to give you the full picture of the family, long hidden secrets, closet skeletons and all.
The non chronological retelling did take a little getting used to, but once I did, it felt quite natural. After all, how many times has someone said “Did I ever tell you about your uncle so-so, he died in a car crash?” In reality, we don’t build up knowledge of our family in chronological order either. It is built up of snippets released to us over time.
I wouldn’t exactly call them dysfunctional but they are certainly unusual. In each generation it is the mother who is the focal point of the story and, with the exception of Alice, we see them growing up, marrying, having children and each one coming to the realisation that they are not living the life they intended to live. I have to say that I found each woman more likeable as a child and tended to go off them as they grew older and embittered. They each seemed to lose their warmth and turned into cold, bitter women who struggled to show love or, indeed, any real happiness. The question that really burned in my mind was “would Ruby follow the pattern laid down by previous generations, or will she find the contentment in life that the others lacked?”
It is a really cracking, meandering in a good way read about a family and its skeletons in its closets, stuffed full with little scenes of a family history that will stay with me. The one thing that I do want to say, without spoiling the read for anyone else is – the dogs, the dogs, the dogs. There were a couple of times when I was reading the book and just had to lean over and give my little dog an extra fuss and love. -
A novel that for me started off promisingly, floundered a bit in the middle, before finishing with a flourish. It’s difficult to translate that to a rating. For most of the book I was thinking in terms of a 3-star rating but the ending pushed it up to a 3.5, which I’ve rounded up to four.
I also found it quite difficult to categorise the book. Basically it’s a family saga with a fair amount of black humour added in. The narrator is one Ruby Lennox, born in 1952, who provides the first chapter of the book from inside the womb. The other main character is Ruby’s mother Berenice, known as Bunty, but the book also alternates Ruby and Bunty’s timeline with flashbacks to earlier generations of their family, mainly though not exclusively featuring the women. The author does this through an unusual technique. A few pages into each chapter of Ruby’s narration there is a reference to a footnote, which takes you to the story of the earlier generation. Initially I wasn’t sure how to react to these. Was I meant to read the footnote straight away or wait until the end of the chapter? In the end I chose the latter option and found it worked well enough.
As a family saga, the novel is very much the tale of an unhappy family. The men are mostly either drunkards and/or philanderers. The women are not exactly selfless either. One abandons her children, others resent them. Siblings are cruel to one another etc, etc. It’s one of those novels with few if any attractive characters. Some of the verbal humour is good, even very good, but the novel also contains some farce/slapstick humour which didn’t appeal to me.
All in all, a mixed bag, but I really liked the ending, which left me with a favourable impression. -
Behind the Scenes at the Museum is really a very good book, marred by one gimmick that frustrates me because it's so unnecessary to the story Kate Atkinson is telling.
For the most part, however, I enjoyed this one immensely. Atkinson has a knack for turns of phrase that are amusing and piercing and unexpected, and I loved these in particular. The story is meandering, and weaves back and forth in time, but it was the sort of meander I greatly enjoy.
Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the recent changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision
here.
In the meantime, you can read the entire review at
Smorgasbook -
Behind the Scenes at the Museum was a magnificently constructed tale of four generations of women in a Yorkshire family spanning the twentieth century as narrated by Ruby Lennox. This glorious book by Kate Atkinson begins with Ruby relating the precise moment of her conception to the ringing of the chimes at midnight on the clock on the mantlepiece belonging to her great-grandmother Alice. Each chapter is followed by a comprehensive footnote or subchapter giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the history of the family and the events we have just witnessed, thus giving one more insight and preventing one from being totally lost. Because there are parts of this book when you just need to trust and hang on.
When I discovered Kate Atkinson several years ago, falling in love with her book Life After Life, I began to read everything she has written, including the wonderful Jackson Brodie series but somehow overlooking her debut novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum. There is a reason that Kate Atkinson is one of my favorite contemporary British authors and the fact that this fabulous multi-layered book was her first novel, is simply amazing. It is one that I will definitely read again.
"Why does nobody notice how unhappy I am? Why does nobody comment on my bizarre behavior--the recurring bouts of sleepwalking that still erupt from time to time, when I wander the house, indeed very much like a little ghost-child, one that is searching futilely for something it's left behind in the corporeal world. (A toy? A playmate? Its heart desire?) Then there's the inertia--lying lifelessly on my bed for hour after hour, doing nothing and apparently thinking nothing either."
"In the end, it is my belief, words are the only things that construct a world that makes sense." -
Kate Atkinson’s first novel won the Whitbread Book of the Year in 1995, beating such heavyweights as Salman Rushdie and his
The Moor's Last Sigh. Behind the Scenes at the Museum us ab ambitious book: a sprawling saga which spans decades of events and covers several generations of characters.
Behind the Scenes at the Museum opens with the birth of its all-seeing narrator, Ruby Lennox, who begins her narration literally from conception (the first chapter begins with Ruby proclaiming "I exist! at the exact moment). The novel consists of 13 chapters, in each of which Ruby describes life of the Lennoxes, a middle-class English family from York, and their life in post-war Britain from 1951 to 1992. Each chapter is followed by a footnote, which consists of events being narrated from another perspective - Ruby's mother, Bunty, Nell, her grandmother, and the great grandmother, Alice. These footnotes - although non-chronological - provide additional information for certain characters' decisions, and explain some of the mysteries concerning missing relatives or family treasures.
With its large cast of characters and extensive timeline, Behind the Scenes at the Museum is also a social history of England in miniature, with the various Lennoxes and their acquaintances standing in for the ordinary people of Britain before, during, and after the War. Although Ruby is a charming and funny narrator, the story she tells is anything but - people make poor choices and suffer the consequences, dreaming of what might have been (such as Ruby's mother, Bunty, who is unhappy in her marriage to George, her father). Personal relationships are bleak and unfulfilling in this novel, and there are many deaths - both of people and animals. It's full of humor, but not in a funny ha-ha sort of way, but funny sad.
Still, it's a first novel and it shows. The amount of characters to keep track of is huge - we've got mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, grandmothers, sisters, brothers, cousins, nieces...as the book progresses it becomes more and more difficult to keep track of them all, which is why a family tree included in each copy would be very helpful. With the introduction of each character the novel lost a bit of its initial momentum - Ruby's enthusiastic "I exist!", a proclamation of the beginning of something important and extraordinary turned into "I exist", a mundane and ordinary existence, filled with unhappiness and lost opportunities, where we're laughing only not to cry. Still, with each new character introduced and another unhappy relationship served on my plate I haven't either laughed or cried - because frankly, my dears, I ceased to give a damn. -
My only experience of Kate Atkinson's writing until now has been three of the four novels in her Jackson Brodie series, which starts with
Case Histories. Quirky is the obvious adjective to describe Atkinson's writing. It has lots of dry humour and sardonic wit, intricate plotting and random connections and coincidences deliberately used to advance the narrative. There's a certain flippancy in the tone which brings into sharp relief the often very serious themes with which Atkinson deals.
This is not a mystery novel, although it does have a mystery element. It's the story of Ruby Lennox, commencing with her conception and birth, which Ruby narrates*. I really love Ruby, who is smart, funny and insightful. Part of Ruby's charm, particularly when she is small, is her adult and very knowing voice. However, this is not just Ruby's story. At the end of each chapter dealing with Ruby's life is another chapter - a "footnote" - which deals with episodes in the life of Ruby's mother Bunty, her grandmother Nell and her great-grandmother Alice. The novel becomes a tale of dysfunctional families, of women who make poor choices when they marry and of difficult relationships between mothers and daughters. In the inter-linking of the stories of these women and the shifts backwards and forwards in time, the meaning of the title becomes clear. The "footnotes" explain things which the characters don't know about their past: the reason for a particular expression on the face of Ruby's great-grandmother in a family portrait, where an heirloom locket comes from, where an ancestor who disappeared actually went to. These are the mysteries which exist in all families. In addition to being a family history, there's also a sense in which this novel is a social history of 20th century England and in particular of the experiences of ordinary people during World War I and World War II.
Although the tone of the novel is generally light-hearted because of the way Ruby tells her story, most of the events it narrates are extremely sad. There are lots of deaths - including deaths of children and animals. The relationships between wives and husbands and between parents and children are far from ideal and very few of the characters lead happy or fulfilled lives. But for all that, this is a book which made me laugh a lot. It's probably one of the funniest sad books I've ever read.
This was Atkinson's first novel and it shows. I see it as having two major and one minor weakness. The first of the major weaknesses is that it's very difficult to keep track of all of the characters in each generation. There's not just Ruby, her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother to keep track of; Ruby's sisters, her aunts, uncles, cousins, and the sisters and brothers of her grandmother all make an appearance. A list of characters at the front would have saved me from confusion. The second major weakness is that the narrative lost momentum towards the end and took too long to be resolved. A minor weakness is that Ruby's behaviour as a child sometimes was not always consistent with her chronological age and her POV intruded into a "footnote" where it didn't belong.
Overall, this was a good read and I enjoyed sharing the reading experience with my friend Jemidar. Funny, sad, moving and poignant, the novel has lots going for it - notwithstanding its flaws - and deserves a low four stars. However, it's not a novel for everyone. Reading the first chapter will confirm whether or not Atkinson's style appeals.
*An allusion to
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman: Atkinson acknowledges this by having one of the characters read excerpts of the novel to her sister. -
Patricia embraces me on the station platform. 'The past is what you leave behind in life, Ruby,' she says with the smile of a reincarnated lama. 'Nonsense, Patricia,' I tell her as I climb aboard my train. 'The past's what you take with you'. (p.381)
The past is not quite a constant concern, but it's hand keeps as tight a grip on the present as it can in this homage to, or reworking of, Lawrence Sterne's
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy.
The narrator here though is less fond of digressions than her original, and unlike him seems to keep her promise on delivering promised chapters on various topics (these called "footnotes" in this book, if not on noses, though there is one on a button.
But like the original, the narrator begins with conception with complete consciousness, the change of gender causes a very different view point - into a female world rather than the male world of Tristram Shandy. Both though are completely shandy.
The narrator in this case is Ruby Lennox going up in an old house in central York with a pet shop on the ground floor, the narrative starts in the 1950s but in the footnote chapters leaps further back to the youth of the mother and grandmother and great grandmother and their lives, lived mostly in Yorkshire. Ruby is conscious of ghosts in the house, but the reader may swiftly feel that these are not ghosts of York's varied and lengthy history but family, personal ghosts, who the Lennoxs may carry with themselves where-soever they may go, yea even if as far off as Whitby. Anyroad us non-Yorkshire folk need not be too frightened, the use of topolect is pretty minimal.
It is a fairly fast, family saga, lacking though, it is true, sheep or cows and other animal saga favourites. It suffers slightly from the author's desire to over obviously tie up loose ends and connect every lost child with its mother - but then it was a first novel. Moderately fun, though with usual familial grimness, but then happy families is, as we are reminded in this novel, a card game not a realistic expectation from life. -
Ruby Lennox begins narrating her life at the moment of conception, and from there takes us on a whirlwind tour of the twentieth century as seen through the eyes of an English girl determined to learn about her family and its secrets.
This was one of the most intriguing books I have ever read....I love Kate Atkinson, but this is 6* -
Is this really the same Kate Atkinson that wrote the so-so mystery novel, Case Histories?? What happened there? This was fan-freaking-tastic. Crazy family secrets, history, motherhood, war...I loved it.
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Kate Atkinson has written a multigenerational story about a dysfunctional family. It starts with the conception of the narrator, Ruby Lennox, in York in 1952. Her mother is irritable and unhappy, her father is a philanderer, and her sisters are not very likable. Chapters with Ruby's story moving forward alternate with flashback chapters filling us in on the family history, going back to Ruby's great-grandmother. It's a family tale of loss, lack of fulfillment, and unhappiness. However, Atkinson's ironic sense of humor and Ruby's upbeat personality prevent the story from being a dark book.
Family secrets are foreshadowed, and slowly revealed. One of the most heartbreaking secrets comes close to the end of the book. It's a very complex book with an elaborate plot and many interconnections. The further I read into the book, the more I liked it. The chapters on World Wars I and II were especially poignant. "Behind the Scenes at the Museum" is very sophisticated for a first novel, and the author won the Whitbread Award. Atkinson's great gift is the ability to see the comic in tragic situations. -
Please know I don't haul the one star out lightly. I have read two other books by this author and enjoyed them, but main protagonist Ruby Lennox narrating her life from conception onwards and I just didn't work out.
Goodreads review published 17/03/20 -
— Минуле — це те, що ти лишаєш за собою, Рубі, — каже вона, посміхаючись, як реінкарнація далай-лами.
— Дурниці, — кажу я, сідаючи у свій потяг. — Минуле — це те, що ти забираєш із собою.
Перше жила-була-й-переклала, здане цього року (в перекладі називатиметься "За лаштунками в музеї", видає Наш Формат, імовірно, буде десь під форум). Це - перший роман Кейт Аткінсон, і вона за нього одразу отримала Costa Book Awards (тоді Whitbread Book Awards, умовно кажучи, такий букер-мінус-понти для більш комерційних книжок).
Elevator pitch: біографія головної героїні від моменту зачаття до моменту, коли вона більш-менш знаходить собі місце в житті, де їй добре. З відступами у родинне минуле, бо всі ми складаємося з родинного минулого.
Є весь базовий набір Аткінсон, який кочує з роману в роман, і вже як рідний (від того, що пудинг із варенням називається "трупик немовляти", до австралійських буддистів і імен пілотів на дзеркалі в барі "У Бетті"). Є все, що я не люблю в Аткінсон (скажімо, гіпертрофоване згущення відтінків чорного в образі матерів), і є все, що люблю - об'ємні герої другого плану, неймовірно круті описи великих родин і їхньої динаміки, коли вони розвиваються через десятиліття (по-моєму, одні з найкрутіших у сучасній англійській літературці). І ще щось невловне, але присутнє теж із роману в роман: кумулятивне відчуття, що текст більший, ніж сума окремих частин. Себто весь текст здається, що воно все доволі необов'язкове, але якийсь фінальний бантик просто вибиває все повітря з легенів, і сидиш вночі, як дебіл єден, ридаєш від вдячності до всього свого родинного минулого, до всіх знаних і незнаних, зримих і незримих людей, які були з тобою чи до тебе, і з діалогу з якими складається кожен із нас.
Бонусом: цей роман містить найкращу сцену весілля (що перетікає у велике побоїще і закін��ується трупом), яку я взагалі бачила в літературі :) -
This book and I had a love/hate relationship . On one hand, I found the writing to be so beautiful and I was very entertained by Ruby’s story. The thing that sent this book into 3 star territory was the footnotes. The footnotes were half the book and contained side stories of other people in Ruby’s family, mostly her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. While they could be entertaining, many of them could have used with harsh editing and a few didn’t need to be there at all. I was always waiting to get back to Ruby’s story while I was reading the footnotes. Also, there were so many characters in this book that a family tree would have been very useful as it was confusing to keep them all straight in my head. As the book progressed and Ruby got older, the book got more enjoyable to me even though her life got more dismal. The family didn’t always seem to have much love for one another and the tragedies the family endured were sometimes told in a flippant manner. I am half in love with this book and half annoyed with it.
-
Puiki, labai patiko
https://knyguziurkes.wordpress.com/20... -
It's another 20th-century English family saga in the book-club fiction bracket - so if you've read much of this sort of thing before, it won't feel necessary or important. You know how it'll go: the Victorian and Edwardian deaths from disease, the fates of characters in the two World Wars, the family secrets, the adoptions, the emigrations, the inevitable dodgy uncle, the textures and zeitgeist-driven behaviour of the 1950s and 60s. Traits and patterns recur in a way that continually teeters between realistic family psychology and something too neat. Characters are a little bit psychic and feel something when close relatives die many miles away; premonitions and mediums are right, as they usually are in popular fiction. You, the reader, may not be psychic, but your predictions based on one vague line - that 'I bet he's going to be gay' or 'she's pregnant, isn't she?', or 'this sounds like there was [family secret that's finally made clear over 200 pages later]' - will all be correct too, because the coding and hints are totally on-brand for this kind of novel.
But maybe you want something to read that's less hard work because it's so familiar; or you know York well and you'd like to read one of the few novels with a really detailed setting there; or you actually haven't read lots of British novels like this already and are interested in them. And as the family is upper-working/lower-middle class it might be a change from the stories about the gentry which Anglophiles often discover first. I find books like this about most other countries fascinating, even whilst it can feel parochial to be reading yet another from the UK, or monotonous if it's one from the US.
Behind the Scenes at the Museum had stuck with me as unfinished business from must-read book lists of the early 00s. (Among others, it was on the
BBC Big Read list of 2003, and - I was surprised to notice, only after I finished the book yesterday, also on the Guardian 1000 list.) I'm pretty sure I used to have a paper copy circa 15 years ago, and I always had a grudge against the book for not actually being set behind the scenes of a museum. Imagine something like a David Lodge campus novel but about curators, and marginally twee-er. That's what I wanted to read, and what I initially thought I would get when I saw the title. (Though York - like Atkinson's later home of Edinburgh - is a whole city-centre like a museum, and the book is about ordinary lives of locals behind that museum façade, locals who ran a shop.) My impression, back then, from the first few pages was that the narrator grated on me, the book also wasn't as much fun as the cover looked. Sometimes I miss 90s collage covers!
When I read Ali Smith's
The Accidental, the voice reminded me of this, and I found myself thinking about The Accidental again as I re-started Museum. (Both are Whitbread winners, incidentally - the prize now known as the Costa.) But it also seems so very typical of bookclub fiction - and of 90s litfic, with its whimsical narrative that begins at the moment of the protagonist's conception, as if she can see into her mother's mind and body. (Like Look Who's Talking (1990)?) But soon enough everything that this mysteriously omniscient narrator had to say about other people made the book interesting way beyond herself.
It's also weighted with age. When I first tried to read this in the first half of the 00s - and certainly when it was first published (1995) - I thought of people born in the 1950s (though mostly the later part of the decade) as relatively youthful. They were still exciting, quite new entertainers in fields like TV and literature: like Stephen Fry (b.1957) of whom I was a huge fan as a teenager. Stephen Fry is over sixty now! Never mind the protagonist of this (b. 1952): she's nearly seventy - a proper old lady. And they're Boomers. "Ewww!" says the younger internet, "white Boomers".
In 1995 Ruby would have been 43. So there's an eerie cyclical feeling about reading this now in my own early 40s, even whilst it merely looks the ultimate in generic and normie for someone like me to read a Kate Atkinson book. But generic can be a useful thing in a book sometimes. I read it when I wanted a relatively undemanding book whilst my attention was focused on other things (though that is a momentary triumph in itself, as there was once a time when I put the book aside after a few pages because it was too much when I was really quite ill). However, its being more enjoyable than I expected, plus its being important to me actually to finish it because of the history with it, meant it ended up getting read when I should have been doing other stuff…
Although it feels like it doesn't matter because it's one of many similar stories, maybe it sort-of does, as one of the examples of this sort of novel whose reputation is likely to survive longer into posterity - because of those lists and because it's become an A-Level set text. (Patricia, the narrator's sister, reads Tristram Shandy for A-level English in the 1960s, which can't help make you think about the different standards over time, or even in different schools at the same time, due to choice of texts*.) And it is well-written if there's room for tropes in your idea of 'well-written', and wittier and more sarcastic than this sort of thing often is. If, in the second half of the 21st century, there are equivalents of the current fans of vintage middlebrow and Persephone Books, Behind the Scenes at the Museum is the sort of thing they might be reading. A lot of it was fun (not so much many of the 1950s sections; my favourites were the pre-First World War sections, and the last chapters once Ruby had left home and her terrible mother - and the two farcical set-tos a little over half way through) and I barrelled through it rarely looking at the numbering, which is unusual for me.
It's also a lot like Life After Life. A lot. Life After Life now seems like a remix of Museum. The different circumstances of branches of the family in the early 20th century. Reused names. (I feel justified in not liking Teddy as much as everyone else did in LAL now I know who he was named after.) Second World War fighter pilots. Short episodes. A suicide by town gas not long after the end of the war. The idea of reincarnation introduced at the end of Museum. (I should probably put my own rating rating for LAL up to 4 as I remember much of it fondly, and it is, like this, a low 4, in that I know it's not as clever as a lot of the stuff GR friends read, but it was enjoyable and likeable and I connected with it, more than with this one. Now I think I appreciate Kate Atkinson more for what she is doing, rather than feeling like I need to apologise / remind some GR friends they wouldn't like her stuff even if I do sometimes.)
And beyond this old cover, which I'm keeping as my shelved edition on GR, Museum is a book of its time, often quite subtly. Pretty much half of each chapter (the historical half dealing with anytime from the 1870s/1880s to not long before Ruby was born) is called a 'footnote'. This was when massive footnotes, simultaneously playful and serious, were just becoming the in thing, the most famous example of course being Infinite Jest (1996); I'm kind of impressed that Museum was earlier on this. A gay character's partner, whom he lives with, is still referred to as a 'lover'. ('Partner' was not uncommon by this time though might have still sounded conspicuously right-on.)
There's a sort of unexamined background essentialism about nationality that in current literary fiction would get hauled over the coals. This is on a family holiday when the narrator is a teenager:
The occupants of the farm, our hosts for the next two weeks, are called von Leibnitz, which doesn’t seem like a very Scottish name to me. Wouldn’t we have done better to have chosen a Farm from the Farmhouse Brochure that was run by a McAllister, a Macbeth, a McCormack, a McDade, a McEwan, a McFadden – even a McLeibnitz – in fact anyone whose name began with a ‘mac’ rather than a ‘von’?
Whilst my family wasn't German, something rather similar could have been said of us, but I would have felt the same myself at her age; it merely feels like a mild frustration at clothes not matching or something. Meanwhile, in something that *does* piss me off, the narrator kept calling their destination "Och-na-cock-a-leekie". (As I'd been thinking a couple of days earlier when looking at GR pages for some crime novels, I do wish it would finally become taboo for people to moan about 'all the foreign names' in reviews for translated books. They don't even have to read them aloud FFS.) This is all from the same character who who clearly disapproves of Uncle Clifford's rant about black people. And you could argue that she has the name thing turned back on herself later, even further than keeping being told that Lennox is a Scottish name when her parents are adamant they're Yorkshire folk - the characters are presumably named after Mary Lennox in the Yorkshire-set The Secret Garden.
Meanwhile, the wonderful 90s lack of essentialism about gender, especially for girls, was very much in evidence here in the way that childhoods from the 1950s are related. Here were sisters playing games that include the Lone Ranger as well as ponies, and there are games and metaphors to do with space, and one wants to be a vet. And at no point, as is the case in recent years anyone saying (as if it was all new and today's kids didn't have grandmothers who were like that), 'ooh isn't it amazing and special that girls are interested in space and science and we have to make a big fuss'. It is just bloody well stuff that they like, and they get on with it, and nobody either obstructs or coddles to imply it's unusual. For quite a while I thought that Patricia, Ruby's elder sister, was like a composite of all the best bits of my mum and myself without the bad sides - but she changes later in the book. Though I wondered how much of that change was specific to the 1960s environment. There may well have been families where both mother and daughter were this as much on trend with their behaviour as the Lennoxes were, but it did feel a bit forced at times.
Strangely contemporary - because of social media controversies in recent years - was the hilarious, and beautifully paced, episode about a wedding during the World Cup. Back then it was only a family row, now the whole world and their in-laws can weigh in on the matter.
This is one of those books where it depends so much what you expect from it. It would be easy to be disappointed by it, as it is just another English family saga with a mildly literary structure, but approach it with low expectations on that basis and you could be pleasantly surprised. Particularly recommended for people who loved Life After Life and want more of the same beyond its actual sequel.
* Among other books Patricia reads as a teenager are In Search of Lost Time, On the Road and Humphry Clinker, and Ruby reads three Walter Scott novels, Rob Roy, Waverley and The Heart of Midlothian. Not quite the Rory Gilmore reading list (I've never seen that show once, just know it by repute) but a fair bit to live up to. -
One of my all-time favourites
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I enjoyed this book much more than most of the members of my book club. I loved Ruby, the narrator, especially as a child, and I thought that the intricate story was very clever and hilarious. The funniest parts were when Ruby was scathingly commenting about her family members, especially her sisters and parents. Terribly traumatic events happen to this family but they’re told in such a light and breezy manner (by Ruby during and before her actual lifetime) that I didn’t find the book at all depressing, but very entertaining. I did find some of the sub-plots (this is an epic book told over decades about this extended family) extremely disturbing. I also was disappointed by parts toward the end of the book: Ruby’s narrative style which worked so well for me when she was young, making her seem engaged & possessing an acerbic wit, makes her seem distant and unfeeling in the latter part of the story. But even though it ended on a low note for me, I really liked the book as a whole.
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Brilliant Brit
I enjoyed this wonderful book immensely, and would recommend it enthusiastically to all my British family and friends—except that all my British friends have already read it! My only hesitation in an American context is that people who have not grown up in postwar Britain as Kate Atkinson (and I) did might not get her dense texture of forgotten brand-names and vanished social customs. In this, she is pitch-perfect, recalling not only the lost era of her own childhood but also the England of her grandparents and parents. I can see why there is a Reader's Guide on the market, for Atkinson's museum contains an almost archaeological treasure that, though sometimes needing annotation, is always authentic.
But her factual authenticity is nothing compared to her authenticity as a person. For the story of the growth of her narrator-heroine Ruby Lennox from conception into young womanhood is that of a life not so much described as lived. I assume that the book is largely autobiographical, but it does not read as that either, since Ruby (who always speaks in a voice older than her years, and can be marvelously funny) is so much alive that she leaps off the page as an independent creation, clearly informed by the author's love-hate relationship with the other members of her extended family, but by no means following her footsteps. It is almost a pity at the end when she comes of age, and the provocative double focus of adult/child merges into one.
The various chapters of Ruby's story, told chronologically, are interspersed with long "footnotes" investigating different episodes in the lives of her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother (this is a feminist book without making a fetish of it), their siblings, and the various men who affect their lives. These stretch back into the late 19th century, spanning two world wars, and show (as other readers have pointed out) how much the lives of women have changed in the past century. I found that many of the most moving parts of the book, some of which brought tears to my eyes, were contained in these sections. But they are told out of chronological order and feature a large cast of characters; I wish I had thought to jot down a timeline and family tree as I was reading.
Various reviews quoted in the paperback edition compare Atkinson to Dickens. Although her voice is quite different, there are certain similarities: both authors enjoy mystery and belated revelations, both have a fondness for highly colored characters, both share a comic vision, and both tend towards the melodramatic. There is more than the average amount of tragedy in this book, and few of their lives follow predictable paths. But Atkinson's characters do not lose reality because of this but seem more vigorously alive. Given Atkinson's infectious voice and grasp on life, the overall effect of this book is wonderfully exhilarating.
+ + + + + +
For another magnificently authentic account of life in Britain in the years around WW2, I recommend Andrea Levy's recent
Small Island. And for a book that attempts a somewhat similar family saga to Atkinson's, but in an American context, I suggest Carol Shields' modern classic
The Stone Diaries. Both these books are among the best I have read in 2006; Behind The Scenes will make a third. -
Pirmąjį Kate Atkinson romaną skaičiau jau po "Gyvenimo po gyvenimo" ir "Griuvėsių dievo". Greta to, kad ir tikėjausi kažko wow, ir nesitikėjau (juk piiiirmas), buvo labai smalsu pažiūrėti, iš ko išaugo tos dvi nuostabios knygos.
"Behind the Scenes at the Museum" taip pat yra apie šeimą, apie skirtingas kartas (mergaitė-mergina-moteris pasakoja savo pačios istoriją, o per ją atsiskleidžia tiek giminės istorija, tiek XX a. Britanija); skaitydama mąsčiau, kad labai daug iš to, ką visai be plano skaitau paskutiniu metu, - didesnės ar mažesnės šeimos sagos, santykių ar paslapčių pjūviai (jau net biški pasiilgau kažko visai fikcinio). Tačiau Atkinson sugeba padaryti taip, kad bet kokia šeima jos puslapiuose atgytų - kad vaikai nebūtų vien lialia cipcip, o bijotų, jaustų pagiežą, pavydą ir gėdą; kad suaugusieji būtų ir nejaukūs, neteisingi, bet ir tvirti ir gyvi. Atkinson personažės ir personažai niekada nebūna tezė ar idėja, jie nekartoja vienas kito, bet ir nėra schematiškai išdėlioti, kad vienas kitą papildytų ar dirbtinai susipriešintų - tas aktyvus, ta intelektualė, nu dar gal būtų gerai koks mėmė. Svarbiausia jos knygose - jų sąveika ir kažkoks esminis nesuderinamumas.
Šiame romane (bet ir dažnai pas Atkinson) nesuderinamumas, trintis ir nejaukumas atrodo kaip kiekvienos šeimos ar bent kiekvienų giminystės ryšių pamatas. Tai sykiu ir dalykas, kurio negali nusimesti, kuris tave formuoja. Kaip ir banalu, bet kai visa tai padaroma pasakojimu - labai paveiku ir tuo pat metu beviltiška.
Atkinson pasakojimas yra žavingas, jau net pirmame jos romane matosi, iš kur atsiras ir "Gyvenimas", ir "Griuvėsiai". Pasakotojos balsas šokčioja per praeitį, dabartį ir ateitį taip, tarsi šie trys klodai būtų dalis bendros srovės, per kurią skersai ir išilgai jai duota nardyti. Turbūt neatsitiktinai ji nuo pat pirmų eilučių prabyla kaip nardanti - dar tik fiziškai, motinos kūne, kaip maža, bet jau sąmoninga ląstelė; ji geba nardyti tiek per skirtingas laiko plotmes, tiek per sąmoningumo ir nesąmoningumo ir dar neaišku kokias būsenas; tuo pat metu ir nesupranta, kas vyksta, bet sykiu ir suvokia daugiau, nei jos amžiuje / padėtyje įmanoma - kaip kad prakalbusiai ląstelei. Apskritai tai ne pasakotojos, o pačios Atkinson pasakojimo savybė, kuri vėliau "Gyvenime" ir "Griuvėsiuose", o ir naujausiame "Transcription" išsiplėtos ir taps bene ryškiausiu kiekvienos knygos bruožu, galinčiu visiškai papirkt ir nuginkluoti. Mane tai tikrai sužavi kaskart vis iš naujo.
Sykiu skaitydama supratau, kuo dar Atkinson, ypač vėlesnės jos knygos (neskaičiau tik detektyvų), atrodo ir yra labai stipri. Ji kažkaip sugeba visu savo konkretaus romano pasakojimu įkūnyti vieną idėją: kaip kad, pavyzdžiui, pasikartojantys ir vis kitaip susiklostantys vieno gyvenimo variantai kalba apie gyvenimo pasirinkimus ir tai, kas yra įmanoma (arba: ar viskas įmanoma) vieno gyvenimo ribose ("Gyvenimas po gyvenimo"). Apie tą idėją ji ne pasakoja, bet j�� parodo, priverčia skaitant išgyventi - tas labiausiai ir paveikia. Pirmame romane to dar tik užuomazgos - bet į jas labai gera žiūrėti ir matyti, kur visa tai nuves. Kaip ir Ali Smith, man tai tokia gydanti, ugdanti literatūra; gal pirmus kartus gyvenime išties pajaučiu, ką turi reikšt toks pasakymas.
Norėjau nuimti 1 žvaigždutę tik už durną siužeto posūkį iš serijos "aš irgi moku kaip Proustas", nespoilinsiu, bet ranka nekilo. Skaičiau angliškai, apie vertimą nieko negaliu pasakyti. Labai rekomenduoju. -
Probably more like 2.5 stars. I absolutely adored
Life After Life, so I was very much looking forward to reading on of her previous titles, but although I enjoyed her play on time in this book (referring to events in the future as well as the past while in the present) as well as her beautiful writing, there were way too many characters in the story, and because of this I didn't connect with any of them. I also thought the book could have been shorter. Maybe my expectations were just too high after Life after life. I'll try her new book which is a follow up on Life after life, but think I'll skip the rest for now.
The Story: Ruby Lennox was conceived grudgingly by Bunty and born while her father, George, was in the Dog and Hare in Doncaster telling a woman in an emerald dress and a D-cup that he wasn't married. Bunty had never wanted to marry George, but here she was, stuck in a flat above the pet shop in an ancient street beneath York Minster, with sensible and sardonic Patrica aged five, greedy cross-patch Gillian who refused to be ignored, and Ruby. -
The story of a family told from the point of view of Ruby, who begins her narration at her conception. There are a lot of characters and, as is typical for this author, her time hopping among multiple time periods makes the book needlessly complicated. I liked it best when it stuck to the Ruby story. It might be better in print than as an audiobook. 3.5 stars
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Patiešām brīniškīgi atklāts dzimtas stāsts, kas atgādina, cik mēs esam siastīti viens ar otru. Pat ja mēs nezinām iepriekšējo paaudžu stāstus, tieši tie ir viedojuši mūsus pašu stāsta pamatu tādu, kāds tas ir.
No grāmatas visvairāk man patika Pazudošo Lietu Skapja teorija - galvenās varones Rūbijas ideja, ka pēc nāves tevi pieved pie skapja, kurā ir pilnīgi viss, ko dzīves laikā esi pazaudējis, sākot ar miljards matu sprādzītēm un otrajām zeķēm un beidzot ar laiku. -
This may be the darkest book I have read all year, yet the creative writing and absorbing story line kept me turning the pages. I found myself rooting for Ruby (Lennox), the heroine at the center of this sprawling novel. I had to keep reading to find out how she would fare. Her older sister Patricia also captured my heart.
The girls were growing up in the years after World War II in York, England. They had the misfortune of being raised by self-centered parents who showed them little affection. Bunty, their mum, had more interest in doing housework and cataloguing her own grievances. George, their father, had serial affairs.
The back stories of four generations of the family were told in a nonlinear, riveting way. It was hard to keep all of the relatives and their stories straight, as there were so many of them. Some of the stories were linked to family possessions, which got passed down through the generations (ie. a rabbit's foot, a glass button, a mantel clock, etc.)
The atmosphere of the novel was so genuinely British, further intriguing this American reader. That combined with the author's sense of humor softened some of the harsh happenings in the book for me.
Still, I was a bit dismayed when the story became darker as the book continued. This is not a book for the faint-hearted. For this reason, I cannot recommend it to everyone.
Content Warning: Multiple deaths, due both to war and accidents.
4.5 stars -
This is a first novel, and it does show in a couple of places--the early chapters struggle to maintain the plausibility of such an adult authorial voice being refracted through the experience and understanding of a child, and there's at least one plot twist towards the end of the novel which I thought it could well have done without. Despite that, I really loved this book: the humour of it is just right for me, balanced right on the edge of tragedy. The prose achieves moments of real loveliness, without ever seeming to strive for the correct turn of phrase, and her observances of her characters are both painful and real. I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for her other works.
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Chapters and "footnotes" alternate between two eras of a Yorkshire family saga. Many dark secrets and inter-related people, significant objects and events. Sometimes a little confusing, especially some of the men in the WW1 era. Also some of the WW1 background (rationing, fear of bombs) doesn't ring true, but that could be my ignorance. Narrated by one of the youngest memebers of the family, who, even allowing for hindsight, is ludicrously knowing and analytical about events in her early childhood.
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This is an engaging, witty, slips-down-easy novel, aiming for greater depth and bite as it meanders towards its ending. In some ways, it reminded me of Anna Burns’s recent Milkman (the snarky, under-age narrator; the eccentric family; the surface cynicism muting into eventual edgy warmth)—although I felt Milkman had a lot more to say.
Behind the Scenes works on a number of chronological planes. The lead narrative is a coming-of-age piece, centered on the story of a girl born in York in 1952, Ruby Lennox. This is all plainly autobiographical, and none the worse for that. (Atkinson herself was born in York in 1951.)
Stacked up behind Ruby’s story, in a series of faux footnotes, are the stories of her mother, and her grandmother and great-grandmother—and of any number of uncles and great-uncles, and cousins. Taken together, these sub-stories combine with the main story to make up some kind of collective domestic biography of the whole twentieth century in the UK, incorporating both world wars and the social changes that accompanied them. There is a certain—discreet—focus on women, and on their lack of choices in life, but this is far from exclusive. The novel is also good on the dynamic of “woman hands on misery to woman.”
I don’t want to be too ponderous in reviewing Behind the Scenes, because it's not ponderous itself. Some of it is very funny, especially the set-piece episodes. I liked the extended accounts of a disastrous family holiday in Scotland in the 70s, and of an equally disastrous family wedding soon afterwards.
This is a novel rather free in its borrowings (the opening scene is imitated from Tristram Shandy, and there is a flagrant borrowing from Ariosto later on, in the form of the “lost property locker” philosophy of life). Yet it is equally generous to those who come after—I can’t believe, for example, that Ian McEwan was not influenced in his Nutmeg by Atkinson’s treatment of the knowing foetal voice.
