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Sep 18, 2007

Jennifer rated it:

I adore Kate Atkinson and enjoyed the humor in this book. The story focuses on a girl in a small (and quite odd) family. She grows up amid a mysterious set of neighbors and relations, dreaming that her dead mother will return to help her through puberty (among other things). As if that were not enough, she also has an odd, uncontrollable habit of time-traveling. Though the story isn't as riveting as Behind the Scenes at the Museum (my favorite Atkinson novel), Atkinson's witty voice is very More...

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Dec 07, 2010

Kirsty added it

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I've had this book for years; I bought it soon after I enjoyed Atkinson's first book Behind the scenes at the museum and even though I've subsequently enjoyed her third book Emotionally weird I've tried to get into this book several times without getting anywhere.

I finally managed to get through the beginning (the very beginning isgreat, then I found it got tedious with trees instead of characters andgave up, it then gets back to being good again - yes the trees are veryrelevant

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Aug 31, 2010

Kate added it

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Dec 25, 2011

Sibyl rated it:

I read this book more or less at one sitting.

I alternated between admiring this book - and getting quite cross with it. I thought it was a mess. But a brilliant one. On one level I admire the author's ambition. The book tries to be everything. It's a romance, a historical novel, a medidation on time and nature, a work of magic realism, a homage to Shakespearean comedy, and an inspired set of variations and improvisations.

In places the writing is wonderfully noir, and the More...

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Jan 12, 2012

Nancy rated it:

This book certainly presents me with a conundrum. The good: the writing style - it a pleasure to read; so jam-packed that, what in other books might seem overdone, here it was relatively light-hearted and literate. The moderate: the initial light-heartedness of the narrative belied the delicate, familiar strains of melancholy and fate, as the characters were lost and had suffered loss and had never entirely recovered.

The book is an interesting ... melange, I am not even entirely ce More...

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Aug 09, 2009

Khaya rated it:

While this book wasn't quite as good as Behind the Scenes at the Museum A Novel, it had many of its strong points -- excellent writing and characterization, acerbic wit, good pacing, etc. It was also more creative and postmodern, which I found to be both a strength and a weakness.

Sixteen-year-old Isobel is a member of the Fairfax family, a long line of cursed individuals. And Isobel's life, like that of her predecessors certainly is miserable. Her mother disappeared permanently More...

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Jul 29, 2011

Derek rated it:

On the surface this is a family history told through the eyes of the younger child, but with bizarre time slips and similar fortean touches that lift it above the average and some clever meta-fictional elements too. The harking back to the time of Shakespeare didn't work for me and I couldn't see the point of the whole forest of Arden subtheme. Without this stuff the novel could have worked pretty well as a meta-narrative about the role of the narrator and his or her unreliability (if it had to More...

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Dec 18, 2008

Clarissa rated it:

kinda wacky...lots of traveling back and forth through time and stories, but a great read. she's hilarious and wonderful...

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Sep 24, 2011

Julia rated it:

It took me a while to get around to reading Kate Atkinson, as the reviews for her books praised the deepness and besides, 'literature' is something you read at school and write essays on afterwards. Having read 'behind the scenes at the museum' one rainy day, I was hooked and immediately sought out more of this talented author's work. Thank you Kate, for helping me realise that literature doesn't automatically equal boring or depressing. Although the themes dealt with are deep, (loss of a key wo More...

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Jan 15, 2009

yoli added it

This was an amazing book. As Sanders mentioned in her book this is all about fairy tales and that mythical cusp between childhood and adulthood. But more than that it's about stories and how they are not definite. Stories change depending on the teller, when it's being told, the audience, and a thousand other factors can change even those core fundamental parts of a story that you thought were, well, the very essence of the story itself. Endings are also, as it turns out, not as important as one More...

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Jul 31, 2011

Stuart rated it:

I was very disappointed in this book. I have read most all of Kate Atkinson's other books, and expected this to be equally good, but it wasn't (in my opinion). The story involves two siblings, Isobel and Charles who were left by their parents care of their aunt. Seven years later, their father returns with a new young wife. So where is the previous wife? The children are close to obsessed with looking for her, and Isobel even seems to time travel looking for her, at some points living out al More...

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Dec 18, 2009

Sherry rated it:

Kate Atkinson is an excellent writer. I've read Behind the Scenes at the Museum twice and all the Jackson Brody books. Human Croquet is her second book and deals with a young girl who has an odd habit of time-travelling, or does she? Human croquet is a game using people as hoops, balls (blindfolded) and controllers. Atkinson never has her characters play it, but she alludes to it often. In the book, Atkinson is the controller, bowling her characters this way and that, having them carom off each More...

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Jun 03, 2009

Donna rated it:

This is my second Kate Atkinson in about a month - the other was Case Histories. I have only read two of her books but there seem to be similarities between them. In both books there are dysfunctional families, child abuse, incest, a fatal stabbing, an axe as a murder weapon, hidden crimes and unrequieted love.

She certainly knows how to write unusual characters though. I'm not totally 100% sure what happened by the end of the book, not a lot seemed to happen until about 230 page More...

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May 09, 2009

karen rated it:

i give it a three even though i enjoyed reading it in a four star kind of way. the three star means there are better books by her out there, but that this one is fun, if imperfect. and its a shame, because she really tells a good story. this one was just a little too ambitious with what it was trying to squeeze in, and there were too many storylines that either didnt connect gracefully, or had to be absorbed by inference. does that make sense?? i am inarticulate. towards the end it gets especial More...

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Jul 28, 2010

Kate rated it:

(Would have given this 3.5 but can't figure out how to half-star yet...) I love Kate Atkinson. When she's on, she's a house on FIRE; when she's off, she's still a beautiful glowing ember in the firmament. Parts of this book really worked for me--fantastical cast of characters, crazy twists, delightfully English and historical/mysterious back story--but I wasn't fully taken with the first-person narrator. Which may be more of a personal taste thing, as I vastly prefer third person limited or o More...

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Jan 03, 2012

Pat rated it:

Reading group book - now I enjoyed Behind the scenes at the Museum and have really liked the Jackson Brodie novels but this one took some getting into and I'm not sure I'm going to rush to finish it for next Tuesday. (Don't expect the rest of the group will be too keen either!)
Well, I finished it but rather wish I hadn't bothered! There are parts of a couple of good books in there somewhere but the whole is a mishmash of poison-induced hallucinations, historical romance and early 1960s d More...

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Sep 28, 2011

Katie rated it:

I like non-linearly plotted books about literary girls with poor social skills (most often: soft-spoken sassiness) and a propensity for trouble & kissing. however, for my money, a better version of this type of book is "our tragic universe" by scarlett thomas, which is the best book i've read in my post-mfa book gorging. and, it improves upon the genre by making the central exigency of the book philosophical hunger. i love philosophically hungry books. i love scarlett thomas. i love ka More...

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Aug 07, 2009

Siria rated it:

I think that if there was some kind of Project Runway for the literary set, Tim Gunn would have taken one look at this book and told Kate Atkinson to bring an editing eye to it. There are so many interesting elements to this—the humour, the meta elements, the mixture of history and imagination—but for me it failed to become a cohesive whole, experimenting with different forms but never quite settling on one of its own. I could see what Atkinson was aiming for—looking at how the stories change wi More...

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Aug 28, 2011

Penelly rated it:

I'm on a Kate Atkinson reading spree at the moment. I'm enjoying all her novels. This one incorporates the mystery and sadness of many of her stories (told through the eyes of a teenaged girl whose parents disappear) but also manages to be quirky and surreal, jumping backwards and forwards in time, with the main character suddenly time-travelling. As usual, it's full of rich well-developed characters and a dark sense of humour, which is perhaps the main reason I keep returning to Atkinson's work More...

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Aug 02, 2011

Isobel added it

This totally lost its way and also my interest in it. I enjoyed the early chapters about the evolution of a town culminating in the nostalgic descriptions of life in the early 60s but towards the end it was frustrating to find that whole pieces of plot were written off as dreams which led one to doubt subsequent turns of events. Reminiscent of the dream sequence in Dallas in the 1980s! If this had been the first Kate Atkinson I read it would have been the only one. Suprised that she got it publ More...

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Jul 25, 2009

Debbie (Readerbuzz) rated it:

Behind the Scenes at the Museum
has sat on my shelves for months;
now that I see how wonderful this
author is, I must read it, too.
"How can I trust reality when
the phenomenal world appears to
be playing tricks on me at
every turn?" Eliza tells us.
And, indeed, it does. Her mother
and father disappear. Time
shifts. Her brother changes
into a dog. Just what is real?
As Eliza says over and over,
"Appearances can be More...

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Jan 09, 2012

Jessica rated it:

I chose this book because Atkinson's "Behind the Scenes at the Museum" was one of my favorite reads of last year. I found this one a little slow at the beginning but I stayed with it and read the second half quickly. The central character is an English girl named Isobel who is celebrating her 16th birthday in 1960 and pondering her past and future. The narrative bounces back and forth between the present day and Isobel's childhood, with side trips into her imagination and dreams. Oh More...

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Sep 17, 2011

Erin rated it:

In Atkinson’s pre-Jackson Brodie works, the emotional thrust of the story is always subtle and realistic, but she often includes these nods to fantasy, or even magical realism. Supernatural elements or fantasy elements are sparingly sprinkled throughout the plot just enough to make you say, “Wait, what?”

Anyway, this is her second novel—not quite as amazing as her first, Behind the Scenes at the Museum—but still quite worthwhile. The character is a girl, Isobel, growing up in a fami More...

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Dec 23, 2011

Katie rated it:

Human Croquet is narrated by Isobel Fairfax and is the story of her family and their neighbours in the village of Lythe. Isobel and Charles’ exotic mother disappeared when they were very young, followed soon after by their father, leaving the children in the care of their steely, old fashioned grandmother and their irascible Aunt Vinny. Even after their father returns several years later no one seems willing to talk about what happened or why. In fact, lots of people in Lythe are hiding thing More...

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Oct 16, 2008

marg rated it:

Excellent! Back into the Atkinson swing of things - this book contains what makes her such an exceptional writer - her dark, sharp wit, her ability to weave together a story that makes you want to read the book twice to get all the insight that only makes sense toward the end, her endless allusions boht literary and cultural, her spinning of a story so rich that you end up having private jokes with the characters, her unbelievable skill at sketching such colorful people - this book was another More...

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Sep 28, 2009

Beth rated it:

Another book on tape, with a great reader (Susan Jameson). It is narrated from the point of view of a 16 year old girl who lost her mother when she was about six. Isobel (Izzy)yearns for her mother as she copes with an exceedingly strange household comprised of her father (Gordon) who disappeared shortly after her mother only to return after his seven year absence claiming he had amnesia. He brings back with him an odd, plump New Zealand wife who has to watch the china in the cabinet because More...

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Oct 01, 2010

Mereke rated it:

This book reminded me of the Thirteenth Tale but not as tightly written - the plot, the themes, the mixture of fantasy and reality, just weren't as seamless. I felt as if the author had a whole bunch of ideas about how her plot might be able to go and couldn't figure out what to do with them, so she just threw them all in, in one big mess. Also, I didn't really get much of an underlying message or emotional takeaway from the book. It was just a random story without a point.

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Oct 09, 2011

Stephanie rated it:

Didn't get it at all. Perhaps I was a teen in the wrong era and wrong country? This was set in the 60s in England and the protagonist was completely forgettable. Plus, there was no forward movement to the book for the longest time. This may be what a teen is all about -- the feeling that life is passing you by while nothing happens to you. I gave up on the book as soon as she gets "transported" into another era for a few seconds. Time travel must alleviate teenage angst.

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Oct 31, 2010

Teri rated it:

I am a fan of Kate Atkinson. This is one of her earlier novels, and it's very different from the more recent ones, almost fantasy-like in some ways. I am not sure I fully know what actually "happened" but that's okay. The novel is set in a small town in northern England, and it covers various time periods, with some time travel moments. It's a little erratic and hard to get into (and obviously, hard to describe!), but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

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May 24, 2011

Margie rated it:

Atkinson deftly handles time changes and multiple stories. In addition to having the main character 'travel' through time, she also has the character ask intriguing questions about time (if we save time, where does it go?).

Lots of backing and forthing and wondering which story line is real. It sounds confusing, but Atkinson writes so well that it's quite readable and engaging.

Recommended.

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