Behind the Scenes at the Museum

Friends sharing books they love usually means you're in for a treat. Thanks, Anya! BEHIND THE SCENES AT THE MUSEUM is a total triumph of a book. Voted a Whitbread Book of the Year when published in 1995 this extraordinarily entertaining novel was the first novel by Kate Atkinson and she surely knows her stuff. Not only is the writing of the first caliber, but the technique of storytelling is invigorating and fun and warm and tragic and in short, about as fine a coming of age novel as anyone has written.Ruby Lennox narrates this delectable tale of her life in a dysfunctional geneology from the point of her conception ( thoroughly entertaining view of life from within the uterus) through her childhood and young adulthood up to the age of 41. Atkinson divides her book into Chapters and Footnotes: the Chapters are the chronological tale of the wonderfully crazy Ruby and her sisters and bizarre mother and father and the Footnotes after each chapter explore the history of her English family for the past century. This affords the reader with a history and an interpretation of that history by wily little girl who is wise beyond her antics. Ruby knows there must be a Lost Property Cupboard (her theory of the afterlife) 'where (when we die) all things we have ever lost have been kept for us - every button, every tooth..library books, all the cats that never came back...tempers and patience...meaning and innocence..dreams we forgot on waking, nestling against the days lost to melancholy thoughts....' That is just a sample of the beauty of Atkinson's writing gifts.The world finally focuses for Ruby but to tell how would alter the joy of discovery this wonderful little character. 'I'm in another country, the one called home. I am alive. I am a precious jewel. I am a drop of blood. I am Ruby Lennox.' This is some of the best writing you'll find. After you've spent a rewarding time reading it, share it with someone you love. Again, Thank you Anya!

The slightly surreal sound of this book - it begins with a woman narrating her own conception -made me fear this would be an annoyingly weird or obtuse book. I also was a little skeptical that the book could live up to its positive reviews. I was delighted to discover that it is not, and it does.Atkinson effortlessly gets inside the head of protagonist Ruby from, yes, conception to middle age. Interwoven with Ruby's story are the stories of her female ancestors, viewed through the prism of contemporary British history. (A thinking Englishwoman's Forrest Gump?) It's all here: emotion, vivid description, gripping plot, characters that come alive, humor, sly wit, and a truly original and fresh writing style. This is one of those books that intrudes on your life, making you want to shove everything aside so you can keep on reading it. At the same time, you dread finishing it because then there won't be any more of it to read.

This is one of the best books I have ever read. I've been carrying it around with me, showing to all my friends and recommending that they read it, too. It's magical, magnificent, a very great, important piece of writing. Although the story revolves around Ruby and her family, the lives of her maternal great-grandmother, grandmother and mother are woven into the story so that in effect, the there two books here: Ruby and pre-Ruby. Several reviewers have described this novel as "one of the funniest books to come out of Britain in years (The NY Times Book Review) and as "comic" (Boston Sunday Globe) and while Behind the Scenes is enormously charming, inventive and endearing, don't buy this expecting it to be a funny or humorous book. At times it is unbearably sad, sadness tinged with dark scamperings of horror. I was telling my husband about this book and he kept saying, "this sounds awful, terrible things keep happening to these people," ! and while that is true, the author tells this story with a beautiful lightness that keeps Ruby safe despite her sadness. One thing I found very interesting about this book was the way the women's lives went from the unending drudgery of cooking, cleaning, mending, pregnancy and taking care of numerous children by Alice, the great-grandmother who lived in rural 19th century England, to the comparatively empty days of Bunty, Ruby's mother, days that are filled up with a dedication to housekeeping that only mimics what was once a necessity of life. Alice lived in a world where the failure to bake bread and to keep up with darning and mending meant that children went hungry and cold in winter. Bunty lives in a world attached to a strict household schedule (washing on Monday, ironing on Tuesday, cleaning on Wednesday, etc) and where store-bought cakes and cookies are looked upon as evidence of a slatternly nature.Another interesting this about this book is the way Ruby's! voice changes from when she is little to when she grows up! . Little Ruby is consumed with magical thinking, she believes in a world of ghosts where things happen for no reason and a deck of cards designed to teach the alphabet become a wondrous bridge to life away from home. As she grows, her voice takes on depth and the effects of secondary school and while the frivolity and delightful silliness that characterize little Ruby's world continue to exist, they are moderated by her maturity. This is a truly wonderful book.

Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson. In "Behind the Scenes at the Museum", Kate Atkinson has created one of the most original first person narrators of recent years. Her character, Ruby Lennox, is at once witty, fragile, sad, and sassy. Ruby's sharp eye for detail, and the way in which she brings alive the interior and exterior fabric of her life through her voice, engages us with its immediacy. The novel begins with Ruby's conception in 1951, charts her exit from the warmth and safety of her mother's body, and her arrival into a very strange and alienating world. Her family is eccentric but engaging, living above the pet shop in York that they own and run. Her parents, Bunty and George, are well meaning, but have cracks in their psyches that play themselves out through interactions with their children. Ruby is not an only child: her older sisters Patricia and Gillian are her constant companions, as bizarre as their parents. The novel takes us through the early part of Ruby's life, constructing a magical world where the strangest events seem inevitable and manageable. Increasingly Ruby becomes aware that there is something about her family that she is not being told and, in a brilliantly realized moment of revelation, Atkinson allows Ruby to discover what that secret is, then we watch her come to terms with it. The past is a strong presence here. Atkinson tells much of the quirky family history through separate chapters called "Footnotes", which take us back to pre-Ruby days, and they do much to explain why her family is as it is, and why Ruby develops as she does. This novel is never predictable, constantly delighting by the way that Ruby's world-weary sardonic view of adults is wittily expressed. The independence of the voice here is powerful and new. Atkinson has found a way to express the young Ruby's viewpoint without sacrificing the older Ruby's knowledge. This achievement means that even within the grimmest passages of the novel there lurks a longing for the past, and an irrepressible need to find the humor and humanity in every situation. In the narrative, for example, Ruby's parents let her down in many ways, but they are never less than loved, and the older Ruby never lets us forget that fact. The vigor and passion of this book comes from the language and the forcefulness of its life-affirming voice. At no time do we think that Ruby's life is easy, yet her resilience and refusal to be miserable carries us on with her. The novel begins with Ruby declaring "I exist!" and ends with the words "I am Ruby Lennox." The pages in between the two statements justify the second completely. By the time we reach it, we know exactly who Ruby Lennox is, and we feel reluctant to leave her. This is a mark of Atkinson's success: she has made us love her character. Some of the cultural references and events that Kate Atkinson utilizes in this novel may be alien to some American readers, but they are not impediments