‘Behind the Scenes at the Museum’ is Kate Atkinson’s debut novel first published in 1995 and narrated by Ruby Lennox born in 1952 to a middle-class family who live above a pet shop in York. The plot alternates between chapters recounting significant events in Ruby’s childhood during the 1950s and 1960s and extended “footnotes” about the earlier generations of her family told in non-chronological order. Most significantly, the story of what happened to Ruby’s great-grandmother Alice has implications for the whole family for many years to come. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Literary Fiction
Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson
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My Books of the Year 2016
I have read some excellent books in 2016 both new and not-quite-so-new. Here is a selection of my favourite reads of 2016:
Favourite fiction
My reading has been dominated by female authors more than ever this year. This isn’t something I deliberately set out to achieve but it is fantastic to see so many brilliant books written by women getting widespread attention. I highly recommend The Tidal Zone by Sarah Moss and The Wonder by Emma Donoghue which could be possible contenders for next year’s Wellcome Book Prize awarded to a fiction or non-fiction book about health or medicine.
I really enjoyed The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry which is one of the most original historical novels I have read in a long time while other recent favourites with a more modern setting include Swing Time by Zadie Smith, the Brexit-themed Autumn by Ali Smith and This Must Be The Place by Maggie O’Farrell. Continue reading
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Nutshell by Ian McEwan
Although Ian McEwan has tackled a vast range of subject matters in his literary fiction, many of his books fall into specific categories or share distinct themes. There are the early macabre works like ‘The Cement Garden’, the espionage stories such as ‘The Innocent’ or Sweet Tooth, the state-of-the-nation novels like ‘Saturday’ or The Children Act and then there are the books like ‘Nutshell’ which somehow fall into all of these categories. Nutshell’ is a unique interpretation of William Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ from the point of view of an unnamed foetus who overhears a murder plot hatched by his mother Trudy and her lover Claude to kill John, who is Trudy’s husband and Claude’s brother, and cash in on the value of their marital home.
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This Must Be The Place by Maggie O’Farrell
‘This Must Be The Place’ by Maggie O’Farrell tells the story of Daniel Sullivan, an American linguistics professor living in a remote farmhouse in Donegal with his reclusive ex-film star wife Claudette, their two children and Claudette’s son from a previous relationship. When Daniel learns that an ex-girlfriend died shortly after they split up in the 1980s, he sets out to discover what happened to her all those years ago, even if it risks destroying his struggling marriage. Continue reading
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The Man Booker Prize Longlist 2016
The longlist for the Man Booker Prize 2016 was announced today. The thirteen books are:
The Sellout by Paul Beatty (Oneworld)
The Schooldays of Jesus by J. M. Coetzee (Harvill Secker)
Serious Sweet by A. L. Kennedy (Jonathan Cape)
Hot Milk by Deborah Levy (Hamish Hamilton)
His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet (Contraband)
The North Water by Ian McGuire (Scribner UK)
Hystopia by David Means (Faber & Faber)
The Many by Wyl Menmuir (Salt)
Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh (Jonathan Cape)
Work Like Any Other by Virginia Reeves (Scribner UK)
My Name Is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout (Viking)
All That Man Is by David Szalay (Jonathan Cape)
Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien (Granta Books)
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The Man Booker Prize 2016 Longlist: Predictions, Possibilities and Preferences
Although I have been following several major literary awards for the past few years, I have never written a blog post specifically outlining my predictions for the Man Booker Prize… until now. Famously dubbed “posh bingo” by 2011 winner Julian Barnes, predicting which 12 or 13 titles will be on the longlist has always been notoriously difficult. Until 2014, the Prize was previously only open to authors from Commonwealth countries but the eligibility criteria have since been extended to allow any work of fiction written in English and published in the United Kingdom to be entered for the Prize. This only makes the annual guessing game even more challenging.
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The Man Booker Prize 2015 Longlist
The longlist for this year’s Man Booker Prize was announced today. The thirteen titles are:
- Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg (US)
- The Green Road by Anne Enright (Ireland)
- A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James (Jamaica)
- The Moor’s Account by Laila Lalami (US)
- Satin Island by Tom McCarthy (UK)
- The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma (Nigeria)
- The Illuminations by Andrew O’Hagan (UK)
- Lila by Marilynne Robinson (US)
- Sleeping on Jupiter by Anuradha Roy (India)
- The Year of the Runaways by Sunjeev Sahota (UK)
- The Chimes by Anna Smaill (New Zealand)
- A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler (US)
- A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara (US)
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The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
I love ‘The Secret History’ by Donna Tartt which is one of my all-time favourite books and also really enjoyed ‘The Little Friend’ so one of the books I had been looking forward to reading the most is her new novel ‘The Goldfinch’ which I recently received as a Christmas present. Given that Tartt only publishes novels approximately once a decade, I expect nothing less than Great Things from her work. In other words, I can’t remember the last time I had such high expectations for a book.
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The Women’s Prize for Fiction Shortlist
The shortlist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2013 was announced today at the London Book Fair. The six nominees are…
Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
May We Be Forgiven by A. M. Homes
Flight Behaviour by Barbara Kingsolver
Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple
NW by Zadie Smith
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Are Book Awards A Waste Of Time?
Source: The Guardian
Whether it’s the Bad Sex award given to the author of the most cringe-worthy sex scene in literature each year or coveted literary prizes such as the Booker and the Pulitzer, book awards attract a lot of attention. They also attract a considerable amount of debate particularly concerning the worthiness of winners. So do we actually need them and what do they really achieve?
Regular followers of this blog will know that I read quite a lot of books which are nominated for the Booker Prize and other similar literary awards. I don’t read these books purely because they are on the shortlist and I certainly wouldn’t rush out and buy the whole lot straight after the announcement. Like most people, I still choose books almost entirely according to personal recommendations and general browsing rather than the number of prestigious awards they have won. However, I am always intrigued by what it is about them that got them recognised and nominated in the first place so I do try and hunt down the ones I think I might enjoy and have heard generally good things about. Continue reading
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